Smile and Map It
Here's a handy thing iPhone has included in it's newest firmware release, which is neither obvious, nor talked about much.
It's called "geotagging," and it's done automatically for photos taken with your iPhone 3g.
When you start your photo app up for the first time, it will ask if you grant permission for the phone to use your location. (You can also elect to enable this later, for this and other apps, by selecting Settings/General/Locations Services ON.)
Now, when you take a photo, the iPhone will record not only the date and time a photo was taken (along with the exposure and filesize, for example), but will also record the longitude and latitude of the shot.
Every image taken with a digital camera contains information stored as part of the image file itself, such as camera make/model, orientation, date/time the photo was taken, etc. This metadata is carried along with the photo file, and with the right tools, this information can be extracted. By adding latitude and longitude coordinates, iPhone's geotagging (latitude and longitude) data can be interpreted and added to, for example, a Google Map, to pinpoint the exact location where a shot was taken.
In the case of the iPhone, the associated data is stored in something called an EXIF file.Photo-sharing tools like Flickr will automatically extract the EXIF GPS data and apply that to the photo's extended description (note, you have to expand the "More Properties" link in the "Additional Information" column associated with each shot.
Besides Flickr, you can view image EXIF data by manually opening each image in a program that can read the EXIF data for you. One fairly ubiquitous program that will read the EXIF data is PhotoShop. And don't be surprized if you find new and interesting mashups and applications that let you map your travels via photos.
It's called "geotagging," and it's done automatically for photos taken with your iPhone 3g.
When you start your photo app up for the first time, it will ask if you grant permission for the phone to use your location. (You can also elect to enable this later, for this and other apps, by selecting Settings/General/Locations Services ON.)
Now, when you take a photo, the iPhone will record not only the date and time a photo was taken (along with the exposure and filesize, for example), but will also record the longitude and latitude of the shot.
Every image taken with a digital camera contains information stored as part of the image file itself, such as camera make/model, orientation, date/time the photo was taken, etc. This metadata is carried along with the photo file, and with the right tools, this information can be extracted. By adding latitude and longitude coordinates, iPhone's geotagging (latitude and longitude) data can be interpreted and added to, for example, a Google Map, to pinpoint the exact location where a shot was taken.
In the case of the iPhone, the associated data is stored in something called an EXIF file.Photo-sharing tools like Flickr will automatically extract the EXIF GPS data and apply that to the photo's extended description (note, you have to expand the "More Properties" link in the "Additional Information" column associated with each shot.
Besides Flickr, you can view image EXIF data by manually opening each image in a program that can read the EXIF data for you. One fairly ubiquitous program that will read the EXIF data is PhotoShop. And don't be surprized if you find new and interesting mashups and applications that let you map your travels via photos.
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