Richard's Tech Reviews

Picasa to Flickr

If you're using Google's Picasa photo management software (version 3) for Windows to manage photos on your computer, but for online sharing you prefer Yahoo's Flickr to Picasa Web Albums, there is no official way to bridge the gap between Picasa desktop and Flickr online.

You can however install a button that will make the link, it won't upload directly from Picasa to Flickr, but it will take all your selected photos and hand them to the Flickr Uploadr.

Use this link in a browser

picasa://importbutton/?url=http://picasa2flickr.4now.net/picasa2flickr_install_v3.pbz

When you access this in Firefox 3, it will ask you what application to send to, just select Picasa.

It will install a button at the bottom of the Picasa screen.

(You will need both Picasa and the Uploadr installed for this all to work of course.)

Info from Flickr Picasa group - Post directly from Picasa 2 to Flickr

UPDATE: Although with this button you don't have the ability to resize that you get with Picasa Export, you can always resize inside of the Flickr Uploadr (Upload->Preferences - Automatic Resizing) as long as you are using Uploadr version 3.0.5 and above (earlier versions lost the Picasa IPTC keyword info on resize).

Flickr photobike with geotagging

bicycle + GPS + camera + in-bike geotagging + Flickr upload =

http://blog.flickr.net/en/2008/09/23/adventures-in-flickr-biking/

The bikes automatically create a photographic map of where they’ve been - no trigger fingers required

...

The bikes were sent to a few Flickr members in California, New York, Vermont, New Jersey and Brighton, England and can be followed at the Yahoo! site, “Start Wearing Purple”. Needless to say, the novelty of riding your camera around town has caught on – curious stares ensue as the bikes doggedly snap pictures every minute or so and post them to accompanying Flickr accounts.

Unfortunately the Yahoo Start Wearing Purple ad campaign website is all-Flash.  This is what the photobike section looks like:

UPDATE: You can download the Owner's Manual (PDF) which features an amusingly incorrect description of how GPS works:

1. LOCATE
A satallite [sic] triangulates your bike and sends location data to the phone

They are using a cellphone with built-in GPS and data plan, they don't say which one it is.  The main additional part is motion detection so that it doesn't take photos continuously.

A camera-equipped mobile phone has been enclosed in a waterproof housing and mounted to the handlebars. The phone contains a camera that is used to capture photos as you ride. Inside the phone is a GPS receiver and motion detector.

Special software was developed and loaded on the phone. This software tells the phone to
snap a picture every 60 seconds. The phone associates the appropriate GPS information
with each picture then automatically sends the picture to the bike’s Flickr account.

When the bike is not in motion for more than 3 minutes, the software tells the phone to stop taking photos and go into reserve battery mode. As soon as the bike is in motion again, the camera “wakes up” and begins taking photos.

For an additional, if perhaps somewhat gratuitous addition, the bike has solar panels.

There is a battery pack mounted on the back of the bike along with 3 solar panels which
power the phone.

It should be possible to figure out which phone they're using from the camera specs

Camera Specifications:
Auto focus
Carl Zeiss Optics: Tessar lens
Focal length 5.6 mm   Focus range 10 cm ~ infinity
Macro focus distance 10-50 cm
Shutter speed: Mechanical shutter: 1/1000~1/3 s
Auto exposure - center weighted
Sensor: CMOS, 5 megapixel (2592 x 1944)

Ah, that's easy.  Based on the specs and the cellphone illustrations in the manual, it is a Nokia N95.
(There may have been easier ways to find this out, but one does enjoy a challenge.)

I wonder how much custom work they had to do on the cameraphone, considering that (with the right firmware) it can already geocode photos and upload them to Flickr using standard Nokia software.

So basically, you could do some of this just with a bike and any GPS-enabled cameraphone (with a reasonable data plan).

Previously:
March 12, 2008  in-camera photo geocoding with Nokia N82  (describes the old Location Tagger software, which is no longer needed after the firmware update)

HTC G1 - Google Android phone - geotagging?

As always, my main interest is to find out whether the new HTC G1 cellphone has built-in geotagging (presumably if it doesn't an Android app could add it, but it's better to have it by default).

I've scoured the two sites available, as well as the Android documentation, but there's no mention of this obvious feature.

UPDATE 2008-10-28: The official user manual (PDF) has a very brief mention of this feature (page 100).  Camera Settings...

Store location in pictures Select this check box if you want to save the longitude and latitude in the picture’s metadata so you know where the photo was taken. Some applications, such as Picasa Web albums, can then display the picture on a map.

The terminology "geotagging" is not used in the manual.

Here's what the setting looks like in the T-Mobile G1 emulator

END UPDATE

Here are the relevant specs:

• GPS navigation capability with built-in GPS receiver and map software
• 3.2 megapixel color camera with fixed focus
• Digital Compass, Motion Sensor

The two main sites are

http://www.htc.com/www/product/g1/specification.html

http://www.t-mobileg1.com/

The digital compass + motion sensor + Google Street View does give one cool feature, shown in video on the T-Mobile site and described by David Pogue in his preview (he got 10 minutes with the phone)

They’ve even added a feature to Google Maps: in Street View (photos of actual locations taken from ground level), you can hold the phone perpendicular to the ground—and as you turn your body, the photo rotates, too, like a photographic compass, so that it matches what you’re seeing with your eyes. It’s amazing and actually useful, especially when you emerge from the subway and have no idea which way you’re facing.

A First Look at Google’s New Phone - New York Times - September 23, 2008

HTC also has a fairly long press release - T-Mobile Unveils the T-Mobile G1 — the First Phone Powered by Android.

Android, the open-source operating system that powers the phone, is documented at

http://code.google.com/android/

In their blog they do have an interesting post about using the GPS and Panoramio to view photos near your location, but nothing about geotagging.

As always, I will let you know as soon as I find out about geotagging support and how to set it up.

ATP PhotoFinder mini - preview

The ATP Photo Finder mini is ATP's latest envisioning of their unique combination of GPS logger and hardware-based photo geocoding.  This preview is just a "first light" overview of the logger component.  Unlike the original Photo Finder, there are now two pieces to the product: a small SIRFstar III GPS data logger, and a separate larger unit which serves as a sort of base station, and which takes the camera memory cards to combine with the logger's data in order to geocode the photos.

The GPS logger component has some nice features: it mounts as a USB storage device (including on the Mac) and stores its data as regular NMEA 0183 files.

Additionally, and AFAIK uniquely in this class of logger, it uses a memory card rather than internal memory - so if you want to record more hours of GPS tracks, just get a larger MMC card.

The Mac compatibility (I used Mac OS X 10.4.10) and ease of use put the GPS logger component of the mini in the same class as the AGL3080.

I did a quick test of it on the bus, it was pretty good under open sky, but it got very jaggedy in urban canyon downtown.  (I was walking in a straight line down Albert and then turned onto Kent.)  The gap in the middle of the larger map is (I think) when I was in a tunnel (it stopped the logging and started a new log file after.)

The above Google Earth tracks were made by just copying the files from the logger and using GPSvisualizer.com to convert them.

Just to re-emphasize, this is a hardware-only photo geocoding solution.  The above looks just at the GPS logger component, but the separate base station which I didn't examine is used to do the geocoding, the logger docks with it and then you insert your camera's memory card and adjust some settings and push a button and it's automatic from there.

I will talk about everything that's in the box (in particular, the base station) and do a full review later.

Disclosure: ATP provided this unit to me for evaluation purposes.

The new mini is not available on Amazon yet.  If you want to check out ATP's previous generation of this technology, a combined logger-card reader-geocoder called just the ATP Photo Finder, you can see it at Amazon.com, and there's also info at http://photofinder.atpinc.com/

Canon EOS 5D Mark II and WFT-E4 GPS adapter

Canon produces a series of adapters, model WFT-Ex that provide a USB port for connecting a compatible GPS.  With the GPS connected, it will do in-device geocoding of the photos.  In the manual for the WFT-E2, it says

The [WFT-E2] transmitter can be used with Garmin GPSMAP or eTrex series or Magellan eXplorist series GPS devices that produce data in the format NMEA 0183 Ver. 2.0.1, as well as some devices that produce Garmin protocol data (as of February 2007).

I wasn't able to find a website for the WFT-E4 specifically yet, but the E2 site has been updated.

Compatible cameras:

• WFT-E2/E2A: EOS-1Ds Mark III, EOS-1D Mark III
• WFT-E3/E3A: EOS 50D, EOS 40D
  * The Wireless File Transmitter WFT-E3/E3A firmware update is required before using the device with the EOS 50D.
• WFT-E4/E4A: EOS 5D Mark II

http://web.canon.jp/imaging/wft/wft-e2/

There is also a short video (Flash format) showing how to connect a GPS to the WFT-E2, including the appropriate menu settings.

Some links and info via DPreview - 5D II: Geo-tagging using GPS with WFT-E4?

Note the support is for GPS data over USB only, there is no Bluetooth support in the WFT-E series.

Some of the GPS loggers I have reviewed can provided NMEA 0183 over USB, although I don't know the exact versions of the NMEA they provide.  Of course, it doesn't have to be a GPS logger specifically, GPS receivers or full GPS display devices may also have USB data capability.  This capability is often called "GPS mouse" mode (because when a small GPS device is connected with a USB cable, it looks a lot like a mouse connected by cable to your computer).

GPS support is just part of what the WFT-E accessories provide, they also have support for networking  (WFT stands for Wireless File Transmitter) and for USB storage (you can have either GPS or storage over USB, not both at the same time).  The WFT-E devices are also quite expensive, they're targetted at professional photographers.  And keep in mind you still have to add the GPS itself; it's not included. 

The WFT-E4A isn't on Amazon.com yet.  The EOS 5D Mark II is available for order.  UPDATE 2009-01-06: The WFT-E4A is now available, but I should mention that for its roughly U$950 price, you could buy 8 or more GPS loggers (a very good GPS logger runs about U$125, and many are U$100 or less).  ENDUPDATE

UPDATE 2009-01-14: As I mentioned above, I have reviewed various GPS loggers, which do not require a WFT-E to use (they are standalone devices).  However, when selecting GPS logger software, be mindful that if you take photos in RAW, not all software will support geotagging RAW images.