bioneural.net » opml http://www.bioneural.net bioneural.net is for stuff worth sharing: commentary by Bruce McKenzie. Major topics covered are gadgets, informatics, Internet, Mac, mobile, musings, New Zealand, photography, Project Koru, quicklinks, rant, rave, travel and Windows Fri, 09 Apr 2010 21:57:41 +0000 en hourly 1 bioneural.net http://www.bioneural.net/images/kiwi-yellow-64px.png http://www.bioneural.net 64 64 bioneural.net A web standard icon for geotagging http://www.bioneural.net/feeder/?FeederAction=clicked&feed=Articles+%28RSS2%29&seed=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bioneural.net%2F2008%2F02%2F21%2Fa-web-standard-icon-for-geotagging%2F&seed_title=A+web+standard+icon+for+geotagging http://www.bioneural.net/feeder/?FeederAction=clicked&feed=Articles+%28RSS2%29&seed=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bioneural.net%2F2008%2F02%2F21%2Fa-web-standard-icon-for-geotagging%2F&seed_title=A+web+standard+icon+for+geotagging#comments Thu, 21 Feb 2008 13:35:39 +0000 Bruce http://www.bioneural.net/2008/02/21/a-web-standard-icon-for-geotagging/ [CC] From http://www.bioneural.net doi:tSglPpAB7a8nfM :

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: geotag-128px.jpg At 32px: geotag-32px.jpg And at 16px: geotag-16px.jpg

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: set.jpg

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 known as "the Three");
  • It should be distinctive in colour from the Three;
  • The colour should in some way represent it's purpose (although this is not a feature of the Three);
  • It has to be recognizable at 16px yet not look dull at larger sizes;
  • It should be format-agnostic (it doesn't matter what geotagging method is used);
  • It should not be closely aligned with iconography from an existing service (e.g. people shouldn't say "Ah, that's the default Google Maps marker!"). That is, it should be service-agnostic.

Inspirations

Words or objects you might associate with geotagging abound. For example, map, compass, navigation, co-ordinates, gridlines, waypoints, pins, markers, X marks the spot, GPS satellites, etc. A Google Image search turns up some rather beautiful yet overly detailed (for our purposes) icon examples, such as Magrathea, geoXtract, RouteBuddy, and HoudahGeo. Some are less delicate (e.g. the button used by the geo microformat or the Geocaching.com logo) but closer to the simplicity we are looking for. The visual essence of geotagging is marking a point with a pointed object (physical or virtual). In the days before the Internet when I dreamed of travelling the world I had a National Geographic world map on my wall into which I placed pins or tacks to indicate places I'd like to visit. I dug around in my wife's stationery draw and found a few examples: 3pins.jpg I think we can all relate to the middle one; it's user-friendly, iconic, and best of all it doesn't get stuck into your heel as easily as the drawing pin when scattered on the floor!

Anatomy of an icon

It might not be an obvious choice, but lacking Illustrator or the skills to use it, I often use OmniGraffle as a drawing tool. The interface is world-class and it can export to a number of formats, including PDF, giving me the option to supply a vector version. Here is the recipe I used if you want to bake your own version, or try out a variation of your own design: anatomy.jpg The tack itself is white (with no stroke) to match the central elements of the Three (and it so happens that my model pin was white!). As you increase size, greater detail becomes visible. Crucially the detail degrades gracefully at smaller sizes (16px and 32px shown magnified): detail.jpg Brown is an oft maligned colour although—as David observed—a tinge of bronze prevents it looking too "dirty". Brown of course is the colour of earth—unless you live in Australia's Red Centre. If you do hail from the Land of Oz don't panic, as the devkit allows you to change the tone (e.g. a red dust effect!) in Photoshop. See the included readme.pdf for details.

Usage examples

It's up to you how you use it, but bear in mind it's not intended as a marker replacement (markers with points are generally more appropriate for that). The idea is to add a visual identifier to your content (blog post, photo, etc.) indicating associated geodata. The image doesn't have to link anywhere, but hyperlinks should be used if it makes sense to do so. For example, I'm using the Geo Mashup plugin for WordPress and display it in several locations. It appears as an overlay on category images (itself a plugin) that have associated geodata, so you know at a glance that the post pertains to a particular location: cat-image.jpg Clicking on the icon transports you to that location on my Google Map (see my Travel category for live examples). The relevant template code is: 



	

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