The Last Minute Blog

The Rad Blog

My bro has another fantastic video blog up. Check it out here.

Automatically Geotag your pictures

Wikipedia: "GeoTagging, also known as GeoCoding, is the process of adding geographical identification metadata to various media such as websites, RSS feeds or images. This data usually consists of latitude longitude coordinates, though it can also include altitude and placenames."

Lots of people have started GeoTagging their images on Flickr and then looking at them on Google Maps and Google Earth.   As of this post there are about 58 000 images on Flickr that have been "geotagged."  I thought this was pretty cool so I wanted to figure out how do it automagically.  How can I geotag my images without having to do it manually?

If you want to manually geotag your images in Flickr check out Phillip Torrone's how-to over at Make.  However if you want to know how to do it in a somewhat automated fashion read on mofo.

I think this is as close as you can get to automatically GeoTagging your images in Flickr without actually having a GPS built into your camera.  The process works by combining the time-stamp of your image with the tracks from your GPS.  In other words the time your pictures were taken just needs to be synced with your GPS tracks.  I've only figured out how to do this on Windows so far. See the comments for an update on how to do it on a Mac.

What you need:

1. Digital Camera
2. GPS Unit
3. Flickr Account
4. WWMX Location Stamper
5. Expert GPS
6. Flickr Importr
7. Google Earth

Here's how you do it:

1. Set the date and time on your digital camera.  Use the time on your GPS.
2. Go out with your GPS set to record it's tracks and take some pictures.
3. Once you get home offload your pictures into a folder on your PC.
4. Download the tracks from your GPS into Expert GPS.
5. Save the tracks as a .gpx file.
6. Open the WWMX Location Stamper.
7. Add all the photos. Menu: Photos, Add Photos...
8. Add Tracks. Menu: Tracks, Add Tracks (the .gpx)
9. Highlight all the pictures and hit Apply tracks.  This inserts the Longitude and Latitude coordinates into the EXIF metadata of the images.
10. Open the Flickr Importr.
11. Add all the pics (notice the geotags automagically generated)
12. Upload all the pics using Flickr Importr

The interesting part is viewing your images in Google Earth or on Google Maps.  But first open Google Earth and open the .gpx file from your GPS.  This will overlay your tracks from your GPS overtop of the satelitte imagery in Google Earth.

Now in order to view your own geotagged Flickr images in Google Earth click on the URL below courtesy of Geobloggers.
http://www.geobloggers.com/googleEarthGeoRSS.cfm?sUsername=YOURFLICKRUSERNAME

For example to view my Geotagged images in Google Earth I would use this URL:
http://www.geobloggers.com/googleEarthGeoRSS.cfm?sUsername=TheLastMinute

This will give you a kml file and just open it and it will launch Google Earth and take you to your geotagged pictures.  So you should now see your Geotagged images and your GPS tracks on Google Earth.  Keep in mind Geobloggers.com is getting popular very quickly so their servers might be a little unstable.

When you get bored of looking at your own images use this link to view other people's pictures in Google Earth:
http://www.geobloggers.com/feeds/flickr.kml

Here's a list of videos that have been geotagged using del.icio.us:
http://www.vlogmap.org/i/data/vlogmap_geovlogged.kmz

You get the idea...  "the map is the interaface"

What about other cool places in Google Earth?
http://www.googlesightseeing.com/mapfiles/networklink.kml

To view your images using Google Maps inside Flickr download Firefox, install greasemonkey, then install the GMIF extension and hit the GMAP button on one of your Geotagged Images.

This whole process is different from just adding geotags on Flickr for one important reason.  This process actually adds the coordinates to the EXIF metadata of the image itself.  What this means is that the image itself will always contain those coordinates wherever it goes from now on.   It doesn't just have tags on Flickr.

So in the future when Google Earth is merged with Picasa or My Life Bits is built into Windows the metadata (gps coordinates in this case) stays with the pictures themselves and you'll be able to do cool stuff with it.  Iphoto will probably still suck by then so don't even bother...

I figure it won't be long before your communication/media capture device (the uber device) becomes location aware.  Your cell phone is already somewhat location aware because it know which cell phone tower its communicating with.  Eventually your uber device will do this entire process for you.  That is, it will add as much automatically generated metadata as possible at the point of media capture including GPS coordinates.  So you can be a huge nerd and do all this now or wait for the uber communication device.  I choose nerd.

It's funny that in order to make all of this work The United States Government Department of Defense (GPS), Microsoft (WWMX Location Stamper), Yahoo (Flickr), and Google (Google Earth and Maps) all had to play nice together.

berber tours

My bro has a new video blog up of his Saharan Camel adventure.  Read the post about the adventure first (ignore little Jeffrey's comments) then check out his video.  This video is so awesome Jon!

Cloud Surfing

"A cloud forms in the remote Australian outback of northern Queensland which offers some of the most dramatic and exciting gliding conditions in the world."

By Gavin Pretor-Pinney

I took the two videos I found here, which originally came from here and combined them into one video that I put here.  (~20 MB .mov)

Beatmatched Camping

As promised I made a little video from our camping trip a couple weekends ago.  Rebecca asked me how I made the video during the obligatory post upload censorship screening.  I found the song in this dude Anti's video blog.  His video blog is rad.  In each video he rips on his bong and talks about whatever.  The song is called Neckbone and Some Home Fries but it's the Dan Automator remix version.  Once I found a song I liked I dumped the video clips onto a timeline and made some cuts.  Simple and fun.  I'm fed up with compressing everything down and trying to screw around with the settings.  So here's the video fairly raw. (~ 30 MB .mov)  Enjoy.

UPDATE: Looks like the lame PC users (most of the world) are not able to watch the video!!! AHHH.  So much for not caring about encoding properly...  Looks like I have to re encode it...

UPDATE 2:  You can try this link for the video if you're on a pc.  (~16 MB .mov)  I'm not sure if this will even work because I never know what damn settings to use to make everyone happy.

.mov camping video videoblog

Camping Weekend

Obligatory after weekend post:  Rebecca and I spent the weekend camping over on the Island.  More specifically - we visited French Beach, Mystic Beach, Sombrio Beach and Botanical Beach.  All of these are on the Southwest Coast of Vancouver Island.  The hiking was awesome - trails were just right for us novice hikers!  The scenery was breathtaking.  The highlight of the trip was when Rebecca spotted Orca Whales playing just off Botanical Beach.  There must of been 25 or 30 of them in two pods enjoying life in their natural environment.  They we're jumping right out of the water and fooling around.  It was incredible!  Hope to make it back to this area again before the end of the summer.

Slideshow here.
Thumbnails of Photos here.
Video to come.

Going Camping

I'm going camping on the island this weekend. Have a good one mofos.

camping weekend

Hive of jets

Check out this animation of one day of air traffic over the United States.  [Via]

Trayboarding

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mountain biking video

A while back a friend of mine introduced me to one of the filmmakers behind the 16 mm mountain bike film The Collective.   I've been told this is one of the best mountain biking films ever made.  See for yourself, check out the trailer for the film.  (13.2 MB video .mov)