Localize Your Flickr Images and Search for Others

Loc.alize.us is an easily installed, free bookmarklet "that enables mapping, geocoding and geotagging directly in your Flickr photo page." A bookmarklet is a small program you can keep in your browser's bookmarks or post in a Web page. Geocoding is providing geographic data, such as latitude and longitude or place names, to maps and other items. Geotagging is assigning these kinds of data to files like photographs and videos. Loc.a.lize.us combines these technologies with Google Maps' API (application program interface) to let you geotag your images so that others can see where the photographs were taken. The localize bookmarklet is available here. Once you have saved the bookmarklet to your browser, simply:

1) open one of your Flickr photos
2) click on the bookmarklet in your browser menu
3) click on "Search Place"
4) enter a location and voilà, your image is geotagged.

You can also search for everyone's geotagged images in a Google Maps interface at the loc.alize.us Web site.

From the developer, here are the key features of the bookmarklet:

• Place Search: Find your places all around the world.
• Address Search: Street-level accuracy for US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan.
• Fast Google Map Interface: Smooth zoom, large controls, map/satellite/hybrid mode.
• Fullscreen mode: Explore our world with maximum browser space.
• Link in Description: Let others see where your pictures were taken.
• Remember location: Your last saved view will be stored for later geotagging.
• Map everyone's photos: Run the bookmarklet on geotagged photos from your friends.
• Shortcut GeoCoder: Try searching for "nyc" or "10101".
• Longitude/Latatide input: Map values like "N 40°45', W 73°59'" or "40.75, -73.98".
• EXIF data extraction: Auto transform of GPS injected data.

and the key features of the Web site:

• Tag Cloud: Filter results by specific topics.
• Find People: See where your or your friends have been.
• Place Search: Find any place all around the world.
• Fast Map Interface: Smooth zoom, map/satellite/hybrid mode.
• Full screen Preview: See your photos in high quality.
• Shareable URLs: Copy and send dynamic anchors

Data Visualization and Mashups: Tag Galaxy

Data visualization and mashups are both hot technology topics, and we might encounter and use them frequently without even recognizing them. Data visualization is simply the representation of data in visual form. Mashups may be defined very generally to mean the combination of elements to create new entities and services. Among other things, mashups might occur in Web applications, music, or videos. A good example of a Web application that embodies both data visualization and mashup technology is Tag Galaxy. It is one of many Web applications that take advantage of Flickr's open API (Application Program Interface), which allows third parties to access and manipulate images and data within Flickr to create new applications with novel functionality (i.e., mashups). Tag Galaxy invites you to search for a Flickr tag (a keyword that a Flickr user has assigned), and renders the search results of matching Flickr tags and related tags visually like a solar system (i.e., data visualization). This allows a user to observe the relationships among Flickr tags (and their associated images) in a novel and visually compelling way. This might prompt new image searches with previously unanticipated keyword combinations, which may in turn yield unexpected yet valuable search results.

The thumbnails shown here are from a search I conducted in Tag Galaxy with an initial tag query of ruins. The constellation of tag results include the terms temple, Rome, Italy, Mexico, castle, ancient, abandoned, and architecture (first image above). I selected temple, and in the next set of results chose angkorwat. On the following results (second image) I double clicked on the sun-like object representing the combination of tags I had followed, ruins+temple+angkorwat, and arrived at a "planet" comprised of images with these matching tags, which I can rotate with my mouse to observe in its entirety (third image). To see more search results I can scroll through more batches rendered in this "planet" form. I can click on any of the individual images to see a larger version and its title, with a link that take me to its home within Flickr.

Tag Galaxy and Cooliris (which I recently discussed here) are just two applications that use Flickr's API to search and display Flickr data in new ways. Some other useful tools are highlighted in the recent article by Ben Parr over at Mashable, titled 7 Totally Unique Flickr Search Tools.

Idée Multicolr Search: Creative Commons Images from Flickr

Forced to leave campus due to one of our typical Colorado March blizzards, I am sitting on my couch catching up on the backlog of e-mails in my inbox. There I rediscovered a recent e-mail thread from the always informative VRA listserv (and the always informative Susan Jane Williams). It concerns a fun and potentially quite useful tool from Idée, the people who created TinEye. It's called Multicolr Search, and it lets you pick up to 10 colors from swatches on its site, matching the colors in images from 10 million Creative Commons-licensed images in Flickr. The results are returned as batches of thumbnails, each of which you can click on to be linked to its Flickr page. Graphic and fine artists can probably imagine all kinds of interesting ways to use this application. And since the "some rights reserved" terms of use are easily located on the Flickr page, one can quickly determine the ways in which the image can be used. For more and related information see the Idée Blog.

On the Topic of Flickr...

Check out this groovy application by Jim Bumgardner called Colr Pickr, which searches for Flickr images based on color.  I can click on the thumbnail images and be taken directly to their Flickr pages.  A quote from the web site:  This is either something that designers and photo editors have been waiting their whole lives for, or one of those "I've created this because the Web lets me do it" kinds of things.-- Alex Soojung-Kim Pang