Richard's Tech Reviews

Microsoft Pro Photo Tools 2 and Photo Calibration Tool provide free photo geotagging options

Microsoft is providing two free tools with powerful digital photo geotagging capabilities, both manual and automatic.  (NOTE: I haven't tested them yet.)

Microsoft Pro Photo Tools 2 (for XP and Vista) can read track logs in a variety of formats (NMEA, GPX, LOG and KML and automatically geotag photos against those track logs.  Otherwise, you can select a position on MS Maps.  It will also do reverse geocoding, turning a GPS position into embedded location (city, state, country) tags.  It's a free download.  For more information about how to use it, read Geotagging Goes Mainstream by Tim Grey.

Another option for geotagging in three dimensions (e.g. locating a photo on a particular floor in a skyscraper) is Microsoft Photo Calibration Tool.

Photosynth now reads EXIF-GPS location data

I thought I'd mention that Photosynth can now read embedded EXIF-GPS locations in the photos you upload, in order to automatically geotag the location of a Synth

I'm not sure exactly how it's determining the "centre" location given that you may have hundreds of photos with hundreds of locations (they just say they use the "averaged location") - I've asked a question in the announcement forum posting about this feature.  There are a lot of different mathematical approaches you could use, as well as trying to match the GPS data against the 3D model that is constructed.

Sony GPS-CS3 is a Mac compatible GPS logger

Like its predecessor, the CS1, the GPS-CS3KA mounts as a USB drive.
Unlike the CS1, there are no problems mounting it on a Mac.  I tested on Mac OS X 10.4.11 and the CS3 switched to USB mode when plugged in, and mounted on the desktop.

While this is only hardware compatibility (Sony does not provide Mac software), it's still very good news because you can use the NMEA-0183 .log files it records to create map traces or for photo geotagging.

The GPS-CS3KA is available from Amazon.com: Sony GPS-CS3KA GPS Digital Imaging Accessory (White).

The .log file, like the CS1's is NMEA with a Sony header at the beginning.  If you're writing parsers, the new header is

@Sonygps/ver1.0/wgs-84/gps-cs3.0

(incidentally I think this is the first time I've used the <samp> HTML tag)

The new logger is reasonably good.  It has a much better chipset than the CS1 (the CS3 has a 20-channel chipset, exact chipset model not specified).  I still wouldn't rate it fantastic in urban canyon, as you can see below, but it has a fast "time to fix" (that is, it is quick to obtain a position).

Magenta is Sony acquiring a position downtown followed by going east, quite noisy. Blue is me returning later in the day, travelling west.

Sony has made to me what is a very weird engineering decision.  They've made it an in-device photo geotagger, so like the Photo Finder, you can insert a camera memory card (SD or Memory Stick Duo) and it will do the time matching, and embed the locations into the photos.  Except that "You can match a maximum of 60 images in one session."  What this means is that if you're like many photographers who may have taken hundreds of photos in a day, you have to use the menu, select Matching, do 60 images, go to the menu, select Matching, do the next 60 images, over and over again.  This makes no sense.

I guess the use case they are imagining is that if you want to do some quick geotagging on the fly, you do it using the Sony itself, and if you want to do serious geotagging of hundreds of photos, you download the .log file and the photos to your computer and do the matching there.  It seems to me odd that they would add a card reader (which must add complexity and cost to the device) for this one very narrow use case.  At a minimum, they should enable the card slot so that you could record .log files there - this would be an incredibly powerful capability, taking you from the current 360 hour limit of the device, to as many hours as you have storage.  I don't understand why they DID NOT enable the card slot to do this.

Also, I am surprised that although they have a display and a control menu, the options you can set are very limited.  The logger is set to record every 15 seconds, which is a bit slow even if you're just walking quickly.  They even provide a helpful note "Since the GPS records positioning information every 15 seconds, the positioning information applied to the image may not be exactly the same as that where the image was actually taken."  I don't think people get a GPS logger so they can know roughly where a picture was taken, they want as much precision as possible.  This long digression to get me to this point: amazingly the menu DOES NOT allow you to change the recording interval.  This is unlike many other loggers which give you granular control to set your interval to 10 seconds, 5 seconds, or even fractions of a second.

Recommendations:
1. Add a mode that does continuous Matching until all photos are matched.
2. Add an option to change the time interval, at least down to 10 and 5 seconds.

I will be doing a full review later.  If you want detailed information, the manual is available for download.  Inexplicably though, copying of text from the PDF manual is blocked, so I had to type all the manual excerpts by hand.

Previously:
September 15, 2006  my review of the Sony GPS-CS1 datalogger with photo geocoding

Sony GPS-CS3KA - next generation GPS logger finally announced

After essentially creating the category of GPS loggers for photo geotagging with the GPS-CS1 in 2006, Sony inexplicably let the product languish for three years with only minor upgrades.  They fell so far behind I have been recommending other brands rather than the CS1.  I had been waiting for a "GPS-CS2" to appear, but they've skipped all the way ahead to GPS-CS3KA.

Some key features:

• built-in Memory Stick Duo and SD card slots, apparently to support hardware geotagging (similar to ATP PhotoFinder)
• LCD display
• 128 MB internal memory
• compatibility with Sony camcorders for geotagging video (it's not clear to me how it does this; there is no video geotagging standard)
• comes with Sony Picture Motion Browser version 4.2 software ("Mac not supported")

It takes one AA battery, but they offer "Long life battery (sold separately) for a one-day trip, up to 15 hours" - the Sony LR6 battery, apparently.  Or if I'm reading it right, 7 hours on an HR6 NiMH battery (it lists 14 hours, but that appears to be by using two HR6s, one after the other).

The downsides:
* There is no information about what GPS chipset it is using.  (More discussion on this below.)
* There is no indication of Mac compatibility (if it's not, it would be very disappointing - it took a ridiculously long time for the previous CS1 to finally be Mac-compatible)
* List price is at the high end, at US$150

It's not clear if you can use the memory card slots to store GPS tracks, or only for inserting memory cards from cameras in order to geotag the photos they store.  It's also not clear if it mounts as a USB drive, like the CS1, or whether it uses some custom serial-to-USB protocol like other loggers.

Sensitivity

I wish manufacturers would make it easier to know exactly what chipset they're using, and its sensitivity.  An older version of the SonyStyle page lists (rather incongruously under audio - presumably someone was confused by the listing of frequencies and dBm)

* Frequency Response : 1575.42 MHz (L1 band, C/A code)
* Sensitivity : -159dBm or less (average, while tracking)

Screenshot from cached version of SonyStyle.com:

If this is true,

it indicates a modern high-sensitivity chipset, and a dramatic improvement over the
-150dBm of the CS1.  (For GPS sensitivity, more negative is more sensitive, and even a single dBm is a fairly substantial improvement.)  Unfortunately, the current version of the SonyStyle USA page no longer lists these specifications.

I will try to find out more information about this device.

UPDATE 2009-05-01: I now have the GPS-CS3 so here are answers to some of the above items I crossed out:

* It mounts as a USB drive, like the CS1, and the USB drive is Mac-compatible, so you can download the logs (processing the logs on the Mac is left to you; no Mac software is provided).  See my posting Sony GPS-CS3 is a Mac compatible GPS logger for more information.

* The external memory cards you insert cannot be used to store logs, only for geotagging digital camera photos

* The manual lists specs of 20-channels, -159dBm

ENDUPDATE

You can see the menu (GPS, Matching, Tools) in the large version of the following image.

Images from Sony Image Gallery - GPS-CS3KA  Image Album.

Amazon.com is currently (May 1, 2009) showing it in stock.

Previously:
June 03, 2008  GPS-CS1 reported fixed in Mac 10.5.3
January 31, 2008  Sony announces GPS-CS1KASP, everyone yawns
September 15, 2006  my review of the Sony GPS-CS1 datalogger with photo geocoding

Wired 17.02: GPS

The February 2009 Wired (issue 17.02) cover story is about GPS, it is in two parts, first a list of 10 GPS applications

Inside the GPS Revolution: 10 Applications That Make the Most of Location

People using applications in order to be able to drive over the speed limit I think is not so "wired",
but I did very much like the idea of iNap, which uses GPS to detect when you are approaching your transit stop (aboveground, obviously) and wakes you up.  I've fallen asleep on the bus and woke up many km west of my stop, and I always worry about falling asleep like that, so it's a cool idea.

Location-aware shopping assistance (scan in a product code, get a display of nearby stores that have the item at a better price) is also an interesting idea, although I imagine it faces considerable database challenges particularly with small retailers.

The second part of the cover story is an article by Mathew Honan where he used a bunch of GPS applications on a cellphone, mostly geopresence ("location streams" if you will).

I Am Here: One Man's Experiment With the Location-Aware Lifestyle

I wanted to know more about this new frontier, so I became a geo-guinea pig. My plan: Load every cool and interesting location-aware program I could find onto my iPhone and use them as often as possible. For a few weeks, whenever I arrived at a new place, I would announce it through multiple social geoapps. When going for a run, bike ride, or drive, I would record my trajectory and publish it online. I would let digital applications help me decide where to work, play, and eat. And I would seek out new people based on nothing but their proximity to me at any given moment. I would be totally open, exposing my location to the world just to see where it took me. I even added an Eye-Fi Wi-Fi card to my PowerShot digital camera so that all my photos could be geotagged and uploaded to the Web.

He has some interesting thoughts about the implications of an "always on" geolocated world.  The second page online also has an interesting comparison of cell tower vs. Wi-Fi vs. GPS location precision (albeit very rough, as there are many different variables that will affect position accuracy).

The third page lists some GPS-capable cellphones, although it picks the Nokia N95 (which has some issues with GPS sensor position and sensitivity) rather than the N82 (which has a better-positioned GPS sensor, at the top of the phone - see e.g. comparison of N82 and Nokia P6000 GPS).

Overall it's a reasonable exploration of Internet-connected GPS-enabled cellphone apps.

As an aside, Wired really needs to add comment moderation / abuse reporting, there are some junk comments on its site.

UPDATE: I see there is only comment abuse reporting available if you're logged in.  It took me a while to understand the commenting interface - there's a tiny blue triangle to the right of comments you can click to expand them - I did a bunch of edits so I'm not sure what remains of my original comment on their site (I see a different version depending whether I look at "All Comments" or just my Permalinked comment by itself) but here it is in its entirety:

I think the article is timely, we will see more and more sophisticated applications (and associated privacy and social issues) as the number of cellphones with Internet, GPS and cameras increases. After a slow start, geotagging photos is becoming a standard feature on these cameras, and the combination of GPS and camera has recently gained more visibility with the announcement of iPhoto 09 support for geotagged photos.

I've been tracking these developments in my blog, it's nice to see Wired continue to investigate the use and implications of these technologies. It would have been nice to have some mention of the other GPS options (automotive GPS, handheld GPS, GPS loggers and trackers) but I understand that from a consumer perspective the cellphone is likely to be a major GPS platform.

More of my thoughts are available at http://scilib.typepad.com/techreviews/