It is 9 a.m. and the thermometer shows -15°C. I have a Nexus S with Google Latitude in my left pocket and my new Lumix LX-5 in the right one. I am in Davos and I am ready for a fantastic day of skiing when I decide to use the new feature of Panoramio: geotagging photos with Google Latitude.
Panoramio is a community photos website that enables digital photographers to geo-locate, store and organize their photographs -- and to view those photographs in Google Earth.
Google Latitude allows you to share your location with friends and view their location on a map. When enabled, Google Latitude History allows you to store your previous locations and this allows you to match your photos with the locations stored in Google Latitude History.
By combining Panoramio and Google Latitude your photos get geotagged automatically as the time stamp of the photos is matched with your location record in Google Latitude History. To use this feature you need to explicitly enable it in your Settings page in Panoramio. With your permission, Panoramio will access your Google Latitude History to find out your location at the time when your photos are taken, so make sure the time in your camera is correct and it matches the value you entered in the Panoramio Settings page.
Using Google Latitude while skiing allows you to find your friends when you get lost on the slopes, and at the same time it allows you to focus on taking nice photos not worrying about the location where you are taking them.
Mapping photos within the city is normally not a problem as you can easily remember street names, points of interest, etc. It is much more difficult to do it in the countryside and that is why I decided to give the feature a whirl while skiing in Davos:
Thanks to Google Latitude, my photos were geotagged just after uploading them in Panoramio. The day was great, snow was perfect, weather was amazing and when I arrived home my photos were already geo-positioned.
For more information about this feature please check our help content and as always we will be happy to hear your feedback in the Panoramio forum.
Posted by Gerard Sanz, Panoramio Community Manager
Posted by Gerard Sanz, Panoramio Community Manager
Great idea, well done!
ReplyDeleteHi there
ReplyDeleteThis makes mapping process more easy for those friends who have not geotagging tools with themselves.
Bravooo
Great new feature!
ReplyDeleteSwitched it on right away, and gave it a quick try on a few HDRs from my recent trip to the Pacific.
Is there a way for Latitude to record location from GPS and add to history, where there is no mobile signal? I visited many remote places without signal, and hence have no geolocation for those pics.
@Gyula: Not yet but we have it in mind. What I am using currently is a combination of offline MyTracks with GPSPhotoLinker
ReplyDeleteWhat degree of accuracy are you claiming for this system compared to GPS ?
ReplyDeleteAlready translated into Spanish: http://www.panoramio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=22211
ReplyDeleteSpanish Forum Bulletin Board
@Galatas: Accuracy depends on different factors: battery, coverage, GPS signal, WiFi reception and GSM signal. In the best of the cases this coordinates are better than just GPS, in the worst cases it can be completely off. To make sure your photo is 100% well positioned make sure WiFi and GPS are on in the device, and you can even make sure that the location is accurate by refreshing your position on the phone when taking the picture.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, this is a great help, but I still would recommend you to double check that the location is correct. If it is not you can drag the marker in the Map as you used to do before.
Best case scenario: The location will be 100% accurate
Worst case scenario: The location will be not 100% accurate but the map will be positioned already in the nearby where you took the picture, so fine tuning the location will be just a matter of seconds.
This said... I agree with @Gyula we are missing offline, and support for other geo-positioning formats. Nice 1st step though ;)
When taking the picture only GPS may be on Smartphone and not WIFI.Trackpoints will be create only by GPS.
Delete@Draken: Thanks
ReplyDeleteIf you want Latitude to have your GPS position, just "enabling" GPS on Android is not enough, because GPS will only be activated when an application requests it. (ex. taking a photo with your phone... though the time it gets a fix, it might be too late...)
ReplyDeleteSo makes sure you have an app using the GPS while you want to be precisely localised.
(Google Maps app is not enough since when your phone is "asleep" -screen off- GPS is released too. Google Navigation will keep it up of course, since it needs it to navigate in the background)
I do not know what app is best for this (not using other phone resources).
Maybe with the new Latitude function where a friend can request to fine locate you ? But I never could try it since you need a friend with latest Android Google Maps too.... I do not know how to trigger it myself.
Thanks for this great feature. I have a google latitude app on my iPhone and this works fine. Of great use, when you travel to new places and forget to note the locations. Google latitude gives your approximate location of the photos.
ReplyDeleteI recently travelled from U.S. to Australia. I changed the camera's time to the local time. When I uploaded the photos, the locations were incorrect. I then updated the camera's time at panoramio -> settings -> camera time. Then it worked fine. So always keep the camera's time to your home-local-time. Even if you are travelling to other time zones.
A suggestion for the Panoramio team. When choosing the nearest GPS location, look for the accuracy of the data point. I had a few bad data points in my latitude history. This put some photos very far from the actual locations. After deleting the bad points from the latitude history, thing worked fine. The good data point, even-though captured a few minutes earlier gives more accurate location.