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CDFinder update will please geotaggers

Bruce — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 18:30:22 +0000

I previously reviewed CDFinder, an asset manager that specialises in metadata, and looked at its potential role in the Mac geotagging workflow. The freshly-squeezed version 5.5 brings a few bug fixes, general enhancements, and of particular personal interest improved support for GPS-related functions. This post considers finding geotagged images, integration with other mapping services, integration with other geo-aware applications (via contextual menu modules), copying GPS locations, displaying KMZ files on your Google Map mash-up, and finding nearby images via your website. Finding geotagged images One option is to use the new GeoFinder. Click your way around the map, acquire a position from Google Earth, choose from a pre-set location or add a custom location to discover images within a custom radius of your starting point: Alternatively right-click any geotagged image (automatically badged with the Geotag Icon) for access to other images in your catalogue based on common IPTC header information or EXIF data: Integration with other mapping services CDFinder allows you to view the location of the current image using Google Earth or a good number of online mapping services (Flickr, Panoramio, MapQuest, Google Maps, SmugMug, WikiMapia, Woophy, OpenStreetMap, Geody, and Yahoo! Maps). You can also upload directly to Locr (account required): Integration with other geo-aware applications A number of Mac applications include contextual menu modules that let you access functionality by right-clicking an image in the Finder, for example. In the following screen capture the GPS-Info CMM and GraphicConverter modules are loaded: In terms of workflow you might add Automator actions or batch-process geotagged images using GraphicConverter ...

Geo Mashup implementation guide

Bruce — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 23:06:46 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

Geo Mashup is one of my favourite WordPress plug-ins (and no, that's not just because it adopted the Geotag Icon). It neatly integrates geographically-relevant blog posts with a custom Google Map displayed within your own site. The Maps API in turn allows those willing to dirty their hands with a little JavaScript the option to pull in geotagged content from external sources, including photos (e.g. from Flickr, Panoramio, Picasa Web Albums), content from other blogs (via GeoRSS feeds), and placemarks from Google Earth (uploaded KML/ KMZ files, even with network links). What follows is an implementation guide, sharing some usage tips and the code used on bioneural.net. The code given here applies to Geo Mashup 1.1.1 and WordPress 2.6.2. Installing the plugin Download Geo Mashup here, expand the ZIP archive and upload the geo-mashup directory to /wp-content/plugins/ on your web server. Log in to WordPress as Administrator and activate Geo Mashup from the Plugins tab. Once active there will be a new Geo Mashup tab under Settings, and you'll need to visit this to enter your Google Maps API key (if you don't yet have one, click the Get yours here link). Don't worry about the other options at this stage. Creating a map page The tag reference gives you the choice of two types of tag to use with Geo Mashup. Shortcode tags are added to posts or pages on a case-by-case basis. Template tags on the other hand involve adding the tag once to your theme templates, and having the same result output automatically ...

Gearing up for SSL to WordPress with Safari

Bruce — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 10:19:01 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

A friend brought an impending WordPress security exploit to my attention, in the form of a CookieMonster. Your data might be at risk if you administer your blog from a public Internet connection (e.g. WiFi in a café). Securing your authentication cookies with Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) provides a defensive countermeasure for your admin loggins, and WordPress.com users now have a checkbox to "Always use HTTPS when visiting administration pages". That checkbox is absent in self-hosted WordPress 2.6.2, but here's how to enable HTTPS and accelerate your admin sessions using Google Gears via Safari. Lock up all your cookies with a secret key You may have already defined a SECRET_KEY to secure the cookies that store information about your visitors, a feature introduced in WordPress 2.5. If you didn't do this visit key generator 1.0 and copy the output into your wp-config.php file after the opening PHP tag, so it looks something like this (don't use this one):

Get your GPS fix with RouteBuddy 2.2

Bruce — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 12:11:27 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

RouteBuddy is an application for Mac marketed as "iTunes for your GPS" in reflection of some interface similarities. It works with most GPS receivers to plot your live position on high-quality street maps, but can also import and export saved data to/ from some devices, applications, and online services. With full-featured and highly portable personal navigation devices increasingly affordable (e.g. TomTom, Garmin) and free tools available for direction-finding and location-sharing (e.g. Google Maps, Google Earth), you may be forgiven for wondering what gap in the market RouteBuddy aims to fill. This question set the brief for my review as I determined to assess its strengths and weakness against the tools you may use already. Disclosure: A single user license for RouteBuddy 2.1.1–2.2 with UK & Ireland maps was provided by RouteBuddy Ltd. for the purposes of this review. Tested using a 1.83GHz Intel Core Duo MacBook with 2GB RAM. Skip to: Prelude The RouteBuddy interface in brief RouteBuddy and GPS device compatibility Have software, need map Tracking Planning Navigating Importing Exporting Sharing Analyzing Plotting Managing Finding Summary and conclusion Prelude I gave up on Route 66 (now defunct route-planning software) with the arrival of Google Maps, but still largely relied on a spiral-bound paper road atlas—until I hired a car with "sat nav". After a false start with Navman, I migrated to the more Mac-friendly TomTom platform, which led me to discover the sport of geocaching. Then it was back to Navman, and then TomTom again, by which time I had caught up with photo geotagging—and that has become something of a preoccupation. Why am I boring you with ...

RouteBuddy To Go for your iPhone

Bruce — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 11:48:43 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

I've been spending a lot of time lately using RouteBuddy (more on that soon), and also too much time playing with various apps from the App Store for iPhone/ iPod touch. Among other functions RouteBuddy allows you to create high-quality road maps upon which you can plot custom points-of-interest (waypoints), or display track logs and route plans. While these maps may look stunning on a 23" Cinema Display as you zoom in and out, that's not hardware you can tuck under your arm as you explore unfamiliar streets on foot. True, you could just print the maps, but Apple's iPhone offers a high resolution yet compact viewport—so why not go paper free? There are several native apps for iPhone that make this prospect enticing; here's how to fake your own RouteBuddy To Go and how to create waypoints in RouteBuddy using your iPhone's location awareness. Take your RouteBuddy maps mobile Firstly, this method assumes that you have purchased RouteBuddy and have licensed suitable mapping (you can of course use other map data e.g. Google Maps) and that you have purchased FileMagnet from Magnetism (or, pending release, an alternative file sync solution and viewer for iPhone). Open RouteBuddy and maximize the map view to encompass the area you are interested in. You can capture this map in one of two FileMagnet-compatible ways: Enter Command-Shift-4 on the keyboard to bring up the crosshair tool and drag it across the dimensions of the map view then release to make a screen capture. Rename the Picture 1.png file ...

Address Book to Google Maps to RouteBuddy

Bruce — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 14:37:16 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

A while back it was necessary to use an Address Book plugin to look up contacts using Google Maps, but Apple changed to make plotting addresses using Google Maps the default behaviour. It turns out with a bit of JavaScript you can grab the coordinates via the Google Maps API and include these in a special URL that will create a waypoint in RouteBuddy. No Address Book plugins or custom AppleScripts required. Credits: Aburt gave me the idea to challenge myself to do it, having discovered this starting point with a strong hint from here. Tested and compatible with Safari 3.1.2 and Firefox 3.0.1 using RouteBuddy 2.1.1. Installation Just select and drag the JavaScript below into Safari's Bookmarks Bar (or your browser's equivalent) for easy access, creating a so-called "bookmarklet", and give it a short name (I used LL2RB but anything will do): javascript:void(prompt('Drag%20the%20selection%20below%20onto%20RouteBuddy\'s%20Dock%20icon:',['rbud://view?&lat='+gApplication.getMap().getCenter().lat()+'&lon='+gApplication.getMap().getCenter().lng()+'&zoom=4'])); Usage Select a contact in Address Book and control or right-click on the address label to reveal the Map of option: This should open a Google Map centred on the address for that contact, with an open info window. If that location looks correct just click on the bookmarklet and you should see something like the following: All you need do now is follow the instruction to drag the selected URL onto RouteBuddy's icon in the Dock. Example URL: rbud://view?&lat=53.371075&lon=-1.477572&zoom=4 This will launch RouteBuddy and create a new waypoint at these same coordinates, which you can then edit as appropriate: But what happens if Google Maps botches the address look-up, or you want to add a location from ...

Mapping fun with GeoRSS and geo-discovery

Bruce — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 00:26:26 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

Continuing the recent geo-fixation trend evident on this site, this article shares the results of a slightly deeper delve into GeoRSS and looks at a great browser add-on that offers auto-discovery of geotagged content in webpages and in some feeds. What is GeoRSS? Wikipedia describes GeoRSS as "an emerging standard for encoding location as part of an RSS feed." It also encodes location in Atom feeds, and rather than the singular "standard" there are actually two variations (GeoRSS-Simple and the more advanced GeoRSS-GML). A third encoding, W3C Basic Geo, is depreciated but still in use (e.g. by Flickr; see below). I happen to use the Geo Mashup plugin for WordPress to geotag articles on this site. As well as adding appropriate metadata tags into the head of location-specific posts, the plugin automatically adds GeoRSS-Simple encoding to my feeds. The GeoRSS-Simple feeds are identified with this namespace declaration in the header: xmlns:georss="http://www.georss.org/georss" Each item in the feed will be marked-up with a coordinate pair separated by a whitespace and enclosed in a point tag. For example: 50.185676 8.464943 And that's it. So what can you do with it? GeoRSS in your blog feed In WordPress you can create a feed for any category or any tag just by putting /feed/ at the end of the URL. This is ideal if you have a dedicated category or tag for geotagged content. In my case I had geotagged content spanning several categories, so I decided to go back and add the tag "geotag" to all my geotagged articles across all categories. This ...

An ABC of geotagging photos on the Mac

Bruce — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 19:30:54 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

This article considers geotagging photos from a Mac perspective, looking at automatic and manual methods, and explaining terms such as data loggers, track points, waypoints, and routes. It lists OS X software options for connecting to data loggers, converting track log formats, geo-locating photos, and writing that data to EXIF for both raw and JPEG images. It also covers the importance of time synchronization, what you can do with geotagged photos, workflow, choosing a data logger and controlling it from your Mac. Introduction With my blog articles geotagged and mapped, and the launch of geotagicons.com behind me, the next challenge was to consider geotagging my photos in future. Some time ago I blogged about doing this in iPhoto, and although workable for a small selection of images this manual/ best guess option doesn't scale well to 2-3 week vacations when you return with several hundred images and a poor recollection of what was taken exactly where. Before getting started on something (i.e. spending money!) I like to try and gain a reasonable overview of what I'm about to get into. What follows is a summary of my research into the terminology, technology, hardware and software that a budding Mac photo geotagger will want to get to grips with. If you also like to look before you leap then this article may be of service to you. Although written with fellow Mac users in mind, if you're afflicted with Windows much of the article is still relevant. What is geotagging? In a photographic context, geotagging ...

A web standard icon for geotagging

Bruce — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 13:35:39 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

Geotagging (or geocoding if you prefer) is the act of associating your content (blog posts, photos, feeds, etc.) with a geographic location (e.g. via latitude and longitude co-ordinates). Thus tagged authors can "mash" their content together with the likes of Google Maps, or the Flickr Map if photography is your thing. However, co-ordinates are typically encoded within metadata (or microformat) tags making them visible to machines but hidden from people. We have de facto web standard icons to help identify feeds, OPML, and sharing—so why not for geotagged content? Update 29.02.08: Thanks to everyone who gave feedback or otherwise contributed to the process of taking this proposal forward. Comments are now closed and further feedback should now be directed to geotagicons.com, where you can now download the new community-designed geotag icon. The goods I propose a web standard Geotag Icon, to be used freely by any geotagger or geotagging service. Here is what it looks like at 128px: At 32px: And at 16px: Important: These images are not final; this is a proposal. Please do not hotlink to these images. You can download them individually by right-clicking the one you want, or as part of the draft Geotag Icon Development Kit here. Family line-up The family resemblance is obvious: Why not complete the set? Grab the Feed icon, the OPML icon, and the Open Share icon. Update 27.03.08: The Open Share Icon Project offers a free, open, community-driven alternative to the trademarked and brand-linked ShareThis.com icon. Icon specification It should be similar in style to existing de facto web standard icons (hereafter ...

Setting up Gmail IMAP on iPhone + Mail

Bruce — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 13:36:27 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

Gmail have begun offering IMAP on some accounts, providing a number of advantages. Derek at 5ThirtyOne offers advice for configuring the service to work better with Apple Mail and iPhone.