Sept 2006 037 by madaise
posted 5 Sep ’06, 8.37pm MDT PST on flickr
Peanut butter (2/3 c.) and chocolate chips (1 c.) – headed for the microwave.
See Puppy Chow Recipe.
Better than mixing peanut butter and chocolate, and much more logical… digital cameras and GPS chips.
I’m very keen on what creative things can happen when we can connect photos with places (alas, had Google bought flickr instead of Yahoo….), but I really really really do not want to manually geocode latitude/longitude, or peck around maps to find a location.
I also don’t want to bolt on some GPS device to my camera- I want my camera to have that chip built in.
This is a job that cries out for automation, and is close, maybe with the iPhone, but again, it is not automatic. When an image file is created, it should just tap into a GPS chip to embed the location. It should be easy for some engineer or bright MIT student (not me).
Can you imagine the wealth of things that might open with, say, every flickr photo having a geolocation… an accurate one (yes, I’d want to be able to override the setting and not geocode my secret locations).
I am not dreaming of Star Trek tranpsorters or flying cars; this is do-able today, and I bet exists as prototypes at some geek camera tech show.
I want to see it on the shelves at Target.
We could easily map the world in shared photos, if only for a chip (not the chocolate kind).
Coming to a Target near you in 2010? There’s a semiconductor manufacturer out there that is working on a low-power GPS chip directed @ the digicamera market (http://www.eetimes.eu/products/analog/206100382)…according to this article (http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20080707VL202.html) the chip is going into mass production Q3 2009…
Did you know about this?
http://www.eye.fi/products/explore/
It is kind of expensive, but has some neat features. And you can get it now!
@atw but my guess is that the geolocation gives the location of where you were when connected to the wireless, not the location the photo was taken. I want my camera to be smart and records its own location w/o no direct touches in my part.