backstage.bbc.co.uk

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Prototypes

Photo Mapping

I have built a mapping/photo project, in which the intent is; Users will browse the map to an exact point at highest zoom level, then get the coordinates. They will then post a photo of theirs for those coordinates, which will then be made public, linked to the location. This will allow any visitor to see places at a glance to find out if they are worth visiting, or just for a browse of some nice photos.


The aim of this project was twofold. Firstly was my long time idea of relating photos accurately to a location, in order to provide people with a resource of what they might see if they visit a location.

Secondly and more related to the BBC, was to work with Duncan Barclay to combine the power of google maps with bbc features. This project aims towards that by bringing some interactivity to the map, so its feasible that a user could find information from the bbc about the area close to where the map is centred, as opposed to clicking a link for a region and being centred there at a fixed point.

The aforementioned second point is where this project is heading for future development. The idea is to provide localised data as much as possible to the central point. Intentions are to grab the county, then return traffic and travel, news and other similar feeds. It will also be possible to find all local pubs within a set radius from the point.

This project will be open sourced under creative commons once commented, although google obviously still hold the copyright for their map and its javascript code. A link to the source will appear on the email group.

This project as noted above does not currently use BBC content, but was built with backstage in mind, again for additional features mentioned above in future.

  • 26 May 2005 11:48 AM

Comments  Post a comment

  • 1.
  • On 26 May 2005 12:30 PM,
  • Stephen McCartney said:

There is already a similar project that is quite far advanced at http://www.geobloggers.com It uses google maps and flickr to tag photos with a latitude and longitude and position them on a map.

  • 2.
  • On 27 May 2005 02:11 PM,
  • Simon Cox said:

About four years ago I had the bright idea of adding in GPS co-ordinates to digital images. As GPS comes down I price you Camera manufacturers could add a gps system into a camera to allow the co-ordinates to be added to the Exif image data. When I eventually found the technical specs for Exif and read through them I realised that its already in the technical spec for Exlif! If you can build this in it would be good - even though its curently redundent.

  • 3.
  • On 02 Jun 2005 11:51 AM,
  • Stephen Miller said:

Yes Simon, I've had a similar idea myself lately, I didn't check to see if it were already in the exif though. Especially with the EU GPS rival launching soon, perhaps prices on location sensing units will drop to be at a useful price, size and accuracy for cameras.

A similar thing thats possible is to fix land coordinates from nearby phone masts. As the mobile phone networks do not tend to share transmitters, almost any point in Britain is covered by several. As the power required to receive is a lot lower than that to transmit, you should easily be able to find three nearby transmitters with strong enough signals to be able to triangulate an exact location. GSM technology is already fairly minituarised and cheap.

Whether something similar comes up, we will have to wait and see I guess! Maybe a project for any electronic engineers out there.

  • 4.
  • On 20 Jun 2005 09:41 PM,
  • Surj said:

Hi All,

There has been similar interest before. Urban tapestries is cool and also some stuff i worked on when doing my masters.

http://urbantapestries.net/weblog/archives/000086.html

There are also a bunch of initiatives to provide tag to GPS mappings so that things like Flickr can be made geo aware.

http://placeshare.org/

Surj.

  • 5.
  • On 04 Nov 2005 01:15 AM,
  • Eduardo Manchón said:

Another similar project, Panoramio.com

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