I have always relied on the excellent Magellan Mapsend Lite software to manage and keep track of my Geocaches but if you do not have this software or if you need something more database orientated to keep track of a huge number of caches then the GSAK is for you.
This software is very useful for keeping track of any kind of coordinates but is especially useful for geocachers since it plugs right in to Google Maps, Geocaching.com and other such sites. It makes it easier to build local filters showing only caches you are interested in for the moment.
If you have not done so already, get the firmware files here to upgrade your favourite GPS unit. This upgrade adds several new features and modes, correct several well known problems and generally makes things much more stable.
And while you are at it, download and install Mapsend Lite if you have not done so already. Great software for planning your trips on the computer before you go outdoors.
This is a wonderful way of browsing photographic sites such as Flickr and others. It transforms your web browser into a sort of cinematic way to discover the photos and scroll through them.
Although I am not certain exactly what it is good for it is at least impressively fast and very nicely done and it plugs in with Flickr greatly. When checking out someones photo stream it is a lovely little tool.
University of Washington and Microsoft are working together to create a new way to browse photos. This is different from the Photosynth [microsoft labs] technology in that angles and positions are being analyzed and so pictures can be related to each other.
By doing this it is possible to ”zoom” in infinitely through the world, visiting famous places or just someones living room. Check out this demonstration video.
However, I have serious doubts that this technology will work well in the real world or become a useful product. It is one thing if you have geotagged photographs (that also contains information on bearing and azimuth) but it is a completely different thing on just analyzing the content of the photographs. For example a Volvo S40 car would look just the same in Brazil as it would in Jordan and there are some temples in Greece that are built as replicas of others, to accurately depict them would mean a lot of manual labour unless we can take a new step in geotagging of course.
This is going to be a rather lengthy post again but bear with me. It will also be a bit technical so I will have to explain some of the basic technical points before we start on the really nifty things here. But in the end you will learn how to use your GPS receiver to track your movments when shooting outdoor, you will learn how to download this information and use it to geocode your pictures so that when they are uploaded on sites such as Flickr your photographs will automatically appear on the map in the correct location.
The resons for geotagging
It is a way of organising your photographs that is pretty new actually. Never before has it been so easy to know where a certain photograph was taken and it is a great way of finding other people’s photographs from a certain location.
My good friend Torbjörn hacking in the tent
It also means that if you use your GPSr when you are on holiday you know exactly on which spot you were when you took that picture and it is a great way of sharing information about good photographic spots, not to mention that it sort of becomes a photographic diary, tracking your movements around with your camera and GPSr.
There many be also personal reasons for geotagging, for me it started because I am a map freak. I love maps in all sorts of ways and I spend half a fortune on them. These days I mostly use electronic maps because they are more versatile but when I go hiking I always have a paper map as a backup – you never know when electronic will fail you.
There are two kinds of photographers, those who has experienced equipment failure and those who will.
