The Jobo Photo GPS (which doesn't even have a web page that I could find), is a fairly conventional GPS logger solution with a single addition, which is that since it sits in your camera hotshoe, it knows when you have taken a photo. If you watch the video of them talking about it, they claim that this enables the unit to run for ONE YEAR on a single set of AAA batteries. It's not entirely clear how they're running, is it waking up and getting a fix? Is it running a continuous fix and only recording it when you take a photo?
Some blogs are indicating this is an in-camera geocoding solution but that doesn't appear to be the case, it seems fairly clear from the video that it's a post-download matching just like with any other GPS logger. Since Jobo has no page on it that I can find, Mac compatibility is unclear, the guy in the video doesn't know whether it's Mac compatible. The price on the Jobo looks to be around U$150.
I have to say, I don't find the Jobo solution very compelling. Even though I don't have a DSLR, it looks kind of awkward with that module stuck on top of the camera. I'm happy with my nice small GPS loggers stuck in my pockets.
GPS continuous-fix is one of the big challenges for consumer device integration. Cameras and cellphones are typically bursty in terms of power usage. They wake up, do a bunch of power-intensive things, and then go back to sleep until the next call or next photo. Multi-purpose devices with integrated GPS often pay a battery-life penalty for having this feature active.
I've always thought the best option would be for the camera to have built-in Bluetooth, that way it could talk to many different Bluetooth devices, including GPSes. I don't know how much battery power a Bluetooth radio requires though.
The video below shows an innovative solution, Geotate has devised a tiny GPS radio that only records the raw GPS signals for a short time window (200ms) when you take a photo. It doesn't do any location calculation at all. When you download the JPEG images with embedded raw signal information, it contacts the Geotate server on the net to determine the necessary information about where the GPS satellites would have been at the time the photo was taken, and then runs the calculation (it's not clear whether locally or on the remote server) in order to determine, based on the signal strength, what the actual location was.
There is no indication of whether they will have a Mac-compatible software suite; the software they show in the video us running on Windows.
One feature in common with both the Jobo and Geotate software is that they are retreiving nearby Points of Interest (e.g. if you were taking a photo near the Eiffel Tower, it would indicate in the software that you had been near there). The Geotate software looks to be linking in to Wikipedia pages for the points of interest. This is a pretty easy capability to add, and will probably be showing up in other photo geocoding software.
According to Engadget, the GE (General Imaging) E1050 will have the Geotate chip. (You can't really tell this from the GE tech specs PDF, which just says "optional GPS accessory").
Thanks to The Map Room for getting me started looking at the Jobo and E1050.
Hi Richard, reading your review from last year (again) reminded me to send you the updated links that were not there pre-launch.
JoBo's product page is here:
http://www.jobo.com/web/photoGPS.447.0.html
And our own summary can be found here:
http://www.geotate.com/geotate-enabled-products
Thanks for the post on the iPhone (jan 6)and yes - i believe you are right P6000 is the only integrated geotagging camera. Although there were Ricoh and Canon accessories that molded to the cameras to make it look 'integrated'. More interestingly - Sony also launched a geotagging video camera (http://www.popularmechanics.com/blogs/technology_news/4298382.html) so maybe Phil Schiller has more insight to what's around the corner.
BTW - did you ever treat tyourself to a DSLR or hot shoe camera like the G9/10?
Mark
Posted by: mark | January 08, 2009 at 08:44 AM