Hi Lotte

Thanks for your response - all really interesting.

I'm still not sure any of these quite hit the spot though for what I was thinking.  They're all things that allow you to take your own content and place something on a map (admittedly in a very clever and fairly automated way with something like Geosynth) or to view content that is already geotagged.  

But they don't allow me to got to Flickr or a museums online collections and say "I know where that is" and readily contribute that information in the same way as you might have user-contributed text-based tags.

On your last point, I'd absolutely see something which would allow you to search/filter/predict in some way, and then whether it was a phone app or a web based tool users would get a tailored sub-set of items and could then refine or simply confirm the location, or indeed point out errors.  Equally they may not know exactly, but could at least put in something that narrows it down, which then exposes it to people who are interested in that locality who no doubt would do the final step and pinpoint it.

I'll just give one practical example..  Take an image such as one of the Normandy landings from the Imperial War Museum - http://bit.ly/cIr4zG.  The description tells us it was taken in Villers-Bocage.  I could then (or perhaps even an automated tool could) generate tags that put it in that locality.  And then someone who lives or visits there should be able to track it down pretty easily.  In fact people have done such things - see http://virtualfunzone.com/normandy-1944-then-and-now.html - but for all their effort, without that relatively small step that such a tool would have facilitated nothing has gone back to the original images.  Without that an opportunity of providing an enhanced experience, whether through a web tool like HistoryPin or via a mobile based AR app, is lost.

Sorry, bit of a brain download, maybe we should take this off list!

Regards, James

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James Morley                       [log in to unmask]
Website Manager                    Tel. +44 (0)20 8332 5759
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew         www.kew.org
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________________________________________
From: Museums Computer Group [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Lotte Belice [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 21 August 2010 10:06
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: User generated / crowd-sourced geotagging?

Dear James,

A few things came to mind when I read your post.

I remember when the Haiti earthquake hit, a lot of people used Open Street Map to geotag places with additional crisis information. Furthermore, the Microsoft GeoSynth project and Wikitude might be of interest. I personally really like smaller projects, such as the Project Cassowary, which asks users to geotag Cassowary sightings to help scientists with gaining insight in this endangered bird.

So, your app idea is great, and although I'm not sure it's unique, I don't know about any other projects like this. It might be the best if such an app consists of multiple levels, where first you need to know in which city a picture was taken, then the neighbourhood (information which could be better added to an online platform) and then have people find out where in a neighbourhood a picture was taken with the app.

Have a nice weekend!

Best,

Lotte Belice Baltussen
R&D Department
Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision


--- On Sat, 8/21/10, James Morley <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

From: James Morley <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: User generated / crowd-sourced geotagging?
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Saturday, August 21, 2010, 9:44 AM

Another one for the map geeks, originally intended as a Friday afternoon post!

Sparked by previous discussions, I wonder if anyone is aware of any successful projects/tools that allow users to geotag resources on the web (or to contribute corrections/enhancements to things already tagged)?

It strikes me that there are plenty of places where you can upload and geotag your *own* content, but not really contribute geo information to that of others.  The only thing I can think of that I've ever come across is http://www.flickr.com/services/apps/72157618453596744 which is a beta for Flickr images, but it doesn't look like it's under active development.


Not that it's a straightforward thing - if you are trying to 'place' a still image in a 3-D space it's not just a question of Lat-Lon, you've got direction, angles, zoom and all sorts to consider (if anyone has tried to add an image on http://www.historypin.com/ you'll know just how hard that can be, even with a nice interface and Streetview images for reference!).



Which brings me to my thought - how about an AR type mobile app which displays the image and then the user walks around with their camera smartphone until they see exactly the same view, hits a button, and the camera grabs and submits all the parameters it needs?  Kind of similar but in reverse to the excellent Museum of London app.  Not sure about the technical limitations currently, but from the human perspective (sorry, terrible pun) if people are prepared to spend hours in photoshop (myself included) doing these sorts of things - http://www.flickr.com/groups/lookingintothepast/pool/ - then I'm sure they'd be more than happy and have a huge amount of fun doing this.



James

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James Morley                       [log in to unmask]
Website Manager                    Tel. +44 (0)20 8332 5759
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew         www.kew.org
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