You know a concept has merit when it's picked up by Google. Google have adopted the Open Share Icon (OSI), the product of a creative partnership that I'm proud to have played a part in. This is something to celebrate: you don't need highly paid professionals or deep pockets to pull off a good idea: you just need plain-old enthusiasm and an unmet need. Here is the story of how the Open Share Icon (OSI) came to be.
Continue reading 'Open Share Icon from idea to Google'
Tag archive for 'google'
With my tweets integrated into WordPress the next challenge was to integrate my Twitter location with my custom Google Map. This recipe uses a WordPress theme functions.php file and the excellent Geo Mashup plug-in for WordPress. One advantage of this method is that you don't need to add custom location tags to each tweet (as you do for example here using Pipes). This method simply reads the location as set in your Twitter profile until you change it (and tweet again).
Continue reading 'Share Twitter locations using Google Maps'
Google seems to be in a geo-frenzy, with the recent release of Google Latitude, and a Google Earth update that supports GPS receivers (formerly a 'Plus' feature; works with my NMEA-compatible GlobalSat BT-335) plus historical imagery, ocean floor topography, Martian and annotated virtual Earth tours. Now Google Labs offer Location in Signature, the IP-based auto-detection of your Gmail posting location. Not without potential downsides for the dishonest (see example) although it can't tell if you're in the bathroom or lounge; in my testing it had a 16km inaccuracy—making cell signal triangulation on my iPhone 2G seem useful.
Nikon ViewNX 1.2.0 is a free download (56.6MB .dmg) and doesn't require a Nikon (e.g. works with iPhone images). Manual geotagging is limited to placing a pin on a Google Map (you can't search the map). ViewNX recognizes automatically geotagged images (embedded at capture, added via a track logger, etc.) and handles geotagging of Nikon's raw (NEF) format as well as JPEG. To view location metadata (indicated by a globe icon), select an image and click it's pin to reveal an info window. Reverse geocoding is not performed and any existing IPTC headers are ignored.
Continue reading 'Geotagging comes to Nikon ViewNX'
Both the Mac OSX Address Book and Contacts/ Phone apps on the Apple iPhone support a custom "geo" field. You can use this field to store GPS coordinates that will open a Google Map when right-clicked on Mac or tapped on iPhone. The reverse geocoding in Google Maps isn't always perfect; this gives you the option to store a more accurate location alongside a human-readable address.
Continue reading 'Add a geo field to iPhone and Address Book'








