Ive come up with a method, that makes adding GeoTags to your Flickr images, and then submitting the images to the geobloggers.com site a slightly more automated process.
if anyone wants to try it out heres what you need to do:
Automated(ish) GeoTagging Flickr Images Process
1) Firstly if you havent already, you need to install the Firefox web browser.
2) Secondly you need the Firefox Greasemonkey extension installed.
(N.B The scripts have now (27/5/05) been updated to be compatible with GM 0.3.3 thanks to Matthew Weymar! :) )
3) Install this greasemonkey script, which is for the maps.google.com site. (Installing GreaseMonkey scripts is as simple as clicking the link then going to Firefox's tools menu and selecting "Install User Script". Then accept the default options and click ok.)
4) Install this greasemonkey script, which is for flickr.com
5) Go to the image on the flickr.com website that you want to add GeoTags to.
6) You should see a new link next to the "add tags" link on the right, called "add GeoTags", click that link, and an input box will be displayed.
7) Enter the placename, streetname or postcode or zipcode or a combination, where you took the image (or any other location identification info that Google Maps will recognise) then click submit. Remember though that Google Maps only covers USA, Canada,UK + Republic of Ireland in great detail at present. (for people in areas not covered by google maps at present, ive created a new script) that utilises multimap.com
8) You should now be redirected to a page with the Google Maps interface embedded in it.
9) Locate the position on the map you wish to get the geotag coordinates from, you can do this by any of the normal means, i.e searching with the search box, or dragging, zooming and scrolling the map. Also worth noting is "double clicking" anywhere on the map will recenter the map.
10) Once you have located the position you wish to GeoTag your image with, click the link on the right hand side that says "Add GeoTags to your flickr image"
11) You will then see a page with 2 buttons. below that should be a message saying "rsp: stat ok", if it says that, that means the geo tags have been added to your image successfully.
12) You can now choose whether to add the "GeoTagged" link to the images description, or as a comment. You can only add the link to the description if you are the images owner though, if you arent the owner, you can only add the link as a comment. Choose which method you want to use and click the appropriate button.
13) You should now be redirected back to your image page, and you can now check the tags etc have been added properly.
14) Finally click the "GeoTagged" link in the images description / comments, and then you are done, the geobloggers site should add your images location to its database.
Any Bug reports, suggestions and ideas on improving the process flow are most welcome.
Cheers :)
Steeev
UPDATE Christopher and Dave have discovered that this method will not work unless you set the browser to accept "third party cookies". Thanks Guys.
FURTHER UPDATE: A guy called Mark has created a lovely visual step by step walkthrough of the process of adding GeoTags via this method.
*Yet another update* You can geotag the rest of the world, even though Google doent have the detailed maps, they do have a satellite view of the whole world, just not high resolution for anywhere apart from USA+Canada. If you want to geotag somewhere not covered in detail by Google Maps, try zooming all the way out from the map, and changing to satellite view, you should now be able to see the whole world if you move the map about.
Further Update At present MultiMap.com have greater worldwide map coverage than google has, so I wrote some geotagging with MultiMap.com scripts for people in countries not currently covered by google maps. You can get the multimap.com geotagging scripts here.
Further Further Update 27-Jul-05 Ive written yet another new GeoTagging Flickr script, this one utilises the fabulous Google Earth. You can read about it here.
A GeoTagging Flickr Group has been started, for anyone wanting to discuss geotagging/geoblogging stuff.
Technorati Tags: googlemaps | google | geolocation | geocoder | geocoding | geotagging | flickr | greasemonkey | photos | photography | maps
A guy called revdancatt created a cool new website called GeoBloggers that lets you "geotag" your flickr photos, geotagging means adding longitude and latitude coordinates to the tags for the image. Then his website pulls in the images and overlays them on google maps, its very cool! and will be even cooler for us in the UK when google maps adds the sattelite images for the UK.
I wrote a couple of scripts to help out, making the process a bit easier, one is a Greasemonkey script, that adds 2 links to the google maps page/s.
Heres the GreaseMonkey Script: GeoTag.Gmaps.Flickr.User.js
UPDATE: Ive updated the greasemonkey script/s you can get the new ones here:
The second script is a javascript bookmarklet, which should work on both Firefox and Internet Explorer. The bookmarklet works the same way as the first link mentioned above, ie when you click the bookmarklet whilst on a google maps page you will be redirected to the associated page on the geoblogging site.
Here the bookmarklet: (*UPDATE* I dont think the bookmarklets below work any more.)
javascript:latlong = _m.map.getCenterLatLng(); latlong += ""; latlong = latlong.replace(/\)/g,""); latlong = latlong.replace(/\(/g,""); latlongarr = latlong.split(', '); location.href = 'http:\/\/geobloggers.com?lat=' + latlongarr[1] +'&lon=' + latlongarr[0];
To get the bookmarklet to work just create a new bookmark/favourite and copy and paste the above code in for the URL. then to use it just hit the bookmark when you are browsing google maps, and you should be redirected to the geoblogging site for that location.
I also wrote another bookmarklet that is based on one listed at http://libgmail.sourceforge.net This one when selected on a google maps page, will display the longitude and latitude coordinates of the current location on the page. Unlike the other version, this one doesnt autoupdate all the time, so its a bit quicker to run, though the downside is the center of the map isnt marked so its harder to get an accurate position for your geotags.
javascript:ll=_m.map.getCenterLatLng();ll +="";ll=ll.replace(/\)/g,"");ll=ll.replace(/\(/g,"");llarr=ll.split(', ');void(document.getElementsByClassName('title')[0].innerHTML='geo:lat='+ llarr[1] + ' ' + 'geo:lon=' + llarr[0]);
UPDATE Ive updated the GreaseMonkey scripts, see GeoTagging Flickr with GoogleMaps PART 2 for more details.
I just found a fun selection of worldwide remote control webcams, you need java support in your web browser, as there are controls to let move the camera up and down and zoom in and out! Great stuff :)
To get to the cameras just click the "Live Applet" links on the google results pages.
Remote Control Webcams
The only problem with the google list, is most of the sites dont tell you the actual location of the camera. Which is why Canons World Map of remote control cameras comes in handy :)
Theres also a cool free windows application that lets you control the cameras more easily and gives you options of storing your fave cams as bookmarks and also lets you view the cameras full screen, plus other cool stuff such as being able to listen to audio feeds as well as see the pictures. In order to use you need to extract the ip address or hostname from the urls given by google and then use the connect menu to connect to the cameras that way.
You can download the windows application for controlling and viewing the cameras here
I finally got myself a GMail account thanks to a mate who sent me an invitation. And I've also got a load of GMail invites to give out myself, contact me if you want one, and I will see what I can do :D
My first impressions of GMail are its pretty damned cool! I really like the snazzy javascript based interface. Great work google!!
OK so you may or may not know this but Spymac were the first company to freely offer an email account with 1 Gigabyte of storage. Well actually thats old news, but the other great thing about them is they also offer webspace (lots of it). Your website is basically your Spymac Username followed by spymac.net so if my SpyMac username was johnsmith my webspace would be at http://johnsmith.spymac.net and my ftp server would be at ftp://johnsmith.spymac.net and my WebDAV folder would be at http://johnsmith.spymac.net:81
I was scratching my head trying to figure out how to connect to Spymac using WebDAV and FTP today, as I wanted to upload a file. The Spymac site itself, though it offers these cool features, doesnt have a very easy to find Help system or a list of FAQs for people who want to actually use their services. Maybe thats the point, if everyone used all their webspace, im sure it would soon bring their whole system to its knees.
Anyway WebDav is easy to use on Windows 2000 and WinXP you can just goto your Network Neighbourhood, then "Add a network place" then just type in your WEBDav folder url, in this case it would be http://johnsmith.spymac.net:81
this will add the folder as a computer/folder in your "Network Neighbourhood", when you click to open the folder, a dialog box will pop up asking you for your username and password, these are the same as for your email account and also for your FTP account.
Im quite new to WebDAV, i havent quite figured out what the advantages of it over FTP are, but it integrates quite well into Windows Explorer anyway. It lets you just drag and drop files to and from it, treating it like just another drive on your network :)
VOIP rocks!
BT know this and they are planning on converting all their phone systems to VOIP (Voice Over IP).
Dont get left behind, download a VOIP softphone such as X-Lite now and try it out! :) Its fun :) You can use it to dial freephone numbers in america, japan, holland and supposedly the uk (though i havent managed to get this to work yet) Have sucessfully called Japan though :) There is also beta support for calling freephone French numbers.
In theory if you want to call a "normal" phone you can connect to a phone service provider/calling card provider on their freephone number then dial out from that to the number you require, for cheap calling rates. Though Im sure there are other ways of doing it.
You can get an easy to setup and use VOIP "softphone" called X-Lite, useable with the FreeWorldDialup (FWD) network here:
http://www.freeworlddialup.com/support/quick_start_guide
BT have just launched a cool new product called BT Communicator, its an application that lets you use your pc like it was a phone, i.e you can make and receive calls as if it was a normal phone, and as an incentive to sign up they are giving away one months worth of free national and local calls through the service :)
Havent actually tried the service out yet, gonna look thru the T+Cs to see if theres any catch, so far havent seen anything. Looks like a good offer to me
One drawback is the minimum pc spec required is a 700mhz windows machine. My aging 500mhz pc might struggle to get it to run. They say it should still work on slower machines, though the call quality might suffer..
Heres a link to their webpage with info on how to signup and download the program: http://tinyurl.com/6tgkp
Ive just been trying out Google Groups 2 Beta. Its pretty cool, news articles are updated in near real time, none of the old waiting 3 hours for posts to arrive. Theres also some other nice new features, such as the ability to subscribe to Groups and to create your own groups, i think they might be going after the Yahoo groups market with that one...
I Found another Free SMS site today: http://www.topup.ie. They give 30 free SMS text messages a month and allow international signup and international sending.
I'm pretty sure there will be a GenieTexter script along shortly for this site :)
Update: and here it is :) topupie.xml
As usual you can download it and install it from here or you can wait for it to be added to the service manager, which reminds me, i really should get back to finishing the upload manager off, Dont worry, its nearly done promise! :)
EXTRA UPDATE: The topup.ie site is no longer giving away free SMS texts. If you are still looking for free texting try another one of the other free SMS service providers listed at the GenieTexter website.
This is pretty cool, its called Proogle, I dont think it will "live" very long, once Google's lawyers get their claws out hehe. Its basically a Google rip-off, but the difference is it shows the PageRank for each search result. Pretty cool though! ;)
Also by the same guy is this other cool tool, the Link Popularity Checker. It checks 5 different search engines for how many links there are to your site, the search engines checked are Google, AltaVista, MSN, AlltheWeb and Yahoo.
Hmmm i feel another bookmarklet or 2 coming on hehe :)
www.bleb.org have started offering free TV listings for the UK in XMLTV xml format, which is good news for users of various PVR and EPG programs such as TV Guide and Freeguide-TV etc, who up until recently got them from Ananova.com, luckily bleb.org are now offering UK TV listings in XMLTV format, so my previous posting about using Coldfusion to download and reformat their html listings is no longer necessary, the only thing needed now is to download each channels listings then unzip them. I've written a Bourne shell script that does just this specifically for TV Guide. Heres the script
-----------------------------
# filename: UKTVgrab.sh
# Get today's UK TV listings in XMLTV format
#
BASE_URL='http://bleb.org/tv/data/listings'
DAYS=1
FORMAT=XMLTV
FILE=ZIP
CHANNELS="bbc1 bbc2 itv1 ch4 five"
for ch in $CHANNELS
do
sleep 2
wget -U 'My TV Fetching application (you@yourdomain.com)' \
-O 'bleb-xmltv.zip' \
"$BASE_URL?days=$DAYS&format=$FORMAT&file=$FILE&channels=$ch"
wzunzip -o bleb-xmltv.zip
mv -f data.xml $ch.xml
done
-----------------------------
The reason I wrote the script for the bourne shell, was there was a working example on the bleb mailing list using the bourne shell, and i was having problems getting a DOS batch file version to work, as whenever wget encountered an ampersand in one of WGet's URL parameters, it choked.
Theres more info on their TV listings at their website www.bleb.org/tv and also on their developers mailing list.
EGenie was the first windows program i used for sending free SMS, it was cool as it was the only program of its kind at the time, it worked by allowing you to send text messages via the Genie.co.uk site (now renamed to o2.co.uk). Then along came Genietexter, which also let you send SMS via the o2 website but offers lots of new extra features, including the ability to send SMS via other free SMS services.
The problem with both of these programs is the slow turnaround time in getting the programs updated, dont get me wrong im not criticising the programmers behind the 2 programs, as i realise how much time and effort it takes to maintain free software of this kind. I guess its partly the fact that these 2 programs are closed source, which adds to the apparent slowness of maintenance updates.
Recently I came across a new program, it was actually released in 2002 so its not really new, just new to me. Anyway this program has an open scripting interface, that lets anyone update existing scripts, of which there are loads, including lots of internation free sms portals. If the script for a site stops working you can go in and fix it yourself, you can also add your own scripts which let you send sms via newly discovered free sms portals. The program is not as polished looking as either EGenie or Genietexter and doesnt run as smoothly but its 'semi-open sourceness' (the actual program is closed source, but the scripting API is open) adds a whole new dimension to the genre of SMS sending applications. The programmer of EGenie, is working on a second generation sms sending application codenamed Mercury, which will feature similar features as SMSSend, but right now the only program in the game is SMSSend. Unfortunately the programmer of SMSSend is also rather slow at updating his program, but luckily the fact that the program is scriptable lets the users update the SMS portal script files themselves and share them amongst themselves via the website.
Get the programs mentioned in the article here: GenieTexter, SMSSend
No I am not talking about the midget robot dude in Buck Rogers. A wiki is a website with a built in user friendly content management system. My first impressions of the wiki was it was pretty anarchic, as by default it lets anyone who visits the site to edit the content of the site, though the fact is there are a lot of volunteer contributors to the sites I've visited anyway, who try and keep evildoers at bay. Working on the same principle as open source, the more eyeballs that can check and verify everythings ok, the harder it is for any one person or group of people to wreck it. The Wikis I have been visiting and contributing to are http://www.wikipedia.org (a free encyclopedia) http://www.wikitravel.org (a free travel guides site) and http://www.wikiquote.org, which is a free quotations database website.
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