Geotagging is a process by which you show exactly where your digital photos were taken. Once they are tagged you may have a little more fun with your tours of wide and distant lands while showing them off through Flickr Maps or Google Earth.
There are many ways to geotag. Some involve owning a camera that costs more than a family sedan. Some involve bringing an extra GPS device with you while you take pictures. But I am very lazy, so I did some research and found the very easiest way for anyone to geotag digital photos.
If you use a PC, then God bless you. If you use a Mac, then you can download a very cool and very free program called Geotagger. Once installed, use Google Earth to surf to the location your pictures were taken. From iPhoto or the Finder, drag the photos directly over Geotagger and let go.
There is no Step 3. The GPS coordinates are non-destructively written to the picture file. Should you choose to upload the picture to a site such as Flickr of Panoramio, they will show up on interactive maps. You can even build Google Earth tours out of your pictures that whisks you over 3d terrain.
As of this writing, the Geotagger software is at version 1.2, and requires Mac OS X and Google Earth v4. Geotagger is made by Craig Stanton, a fellow from New Zealand who appreciates donations by thankful users.
Eventually, we will all have 3G iPhones which take photos and video and synchronize your approximate position into the metadata based on wireless triangulation. But until that time, we’ll have to settle for our little wonderful MacBooks that make it so easy geez someone needs to pay me for this stuff.
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