Geotagging Flickr

I had heard the term Geotagging before, but hadn't looked it up until yesterday. A quick Google for the terms "geotagging" and "flickr" (since that's the photo site I'm using) revealed the rather simple method of geotagging your photographs and what it means to do so. Tools needed: Firefox browser, GreaseMonkey plug in for the browser, and 2 GreaseMonkey scripts. After that, it's a few seconds per photo (assuming that the servers aren't acting up as they were on me yesterday) as described on this site.

Basically, Geotagging allows the user to add tags (or keywords) to their photos that locate on a map where said picture was taken. This allows viewers of the photograph to get an idea of where on the globe the photo was shot. It adds more information which may or may not be relevant to the viewer.

To the geek in me, this is just plain cool. After figuring out that Zone Alarm was blocking my cookies, I spent about a half hour tagging several of my recent Oregon holiday photos. If you open the photos to the largest size and look in the description, it will say "Geotagged". Clicking that link will bring up another site which will look up the data and place it on the map.

Shawn, a keywording goddess, had the reaction that I expected: "I'm very happy for you, dear." Which is to say that she appreciates the geek out, but not the results. To her mind, this is a metadata abomination. Too much information that is likely to be useless and irrelevant in the future. I explained, "I don't care. It's new, it's cool, and I'm just having fun."

Luckily, I spent some time chatting in IM with Kris about this before Shawn got home. Kris was enthusiastic as she was aware of this before I wrote her. Naturally, she provided me with the reinforcement I was looking for in this and I acknowledged such, knowing that the keywording goddess was not likely to do so. Thanks, Kris.

Flickr has a Geotagging forum for further info.