Comments on: FlickrMaps a failure?

By: Philip Sheldrake

Philip Sheldrake — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 19:57:19 +0000

Ivanka,
Thanks for the reference. As a Flickr Pro myself, I was a bit disappointed with FlickrMaps… but I guess this is their first attempt. Our first version of OnOneMap had its problems, although the latest update is doing very well. In fact, all suggestions welcome for growing OnOneMap from hundreds of thousands of uniques per month to millions.

Philip (philip at ononemap.com)

By: ivanka majic

ivanka majic — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 20:49:18 +0000

I am inclined to agree that the geo-tagging thing on Flickr wasn’t all I expected it to be.

One of my contacts told me to give it a go and I thought that it was a brilliant idea! My flickr behaviour is a bit different from yours, I upload a batch, into a set, with some general tags. Sometimes I go through a add more tags etc straight away and sometimes, if I am a little bored in front of the telly or something I go through and delete the ones I don’t really like, add some tags…’do flickr house-keeping’

So, I thought geo-tagging would be great. I sat down, all ready to geo-tag away. It took me ages to find it too (probably only a few minutes but I am not very patient). And then when I did find it the lack of detail was a huge disappointment. I was looking forward to being able to find someone else’s pictures of my favourite beach in Croatia and so I was fully intending to be really dilligent about showing where I had taken my pitcures. Too hard. I gave up.

I was also expecting a google map mashup type thing. Like ononemap but for pictures.

Maybe the next release will be better?

By: Eduardo Manchon

Eduardo Manchon — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 14:18:48 +0000

I believe Flickr Maps interface is brilliant, but its geotagging interface is not designed for accuracy, but for massive geotagging because of two reasons. First, Yahoo Maps poor coverage for most of the World makes impossible exact geotagging. Second, it takes to much time to find the exact location. Most of Flickr users are not eager to do it, they just want to locate their photos aproximately in the place they took them. Actually they are both good reasons to do it the way they did and I believe that for some users and uses it's ok, but not for others. If your prefer Google Maps for geolocating your photos and you care about accuracy, Panoramio may be interesting for you. You can later watch the photos in Google Earth (via feed KML), a much better experience than web-based maps. Eduardo

By: Gordon

Gordon — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 11:59:16 +0000

I’d go with the US-centric comment. The resolution of the maps in the UK is awful, and while you read posts (Veen I think?) where he talks about making sure the geotag for his photo was in the correct part of the local park… then try it in the UK.. forget it. If you are lucky you can identify the park but beyond that there isn’t much more you can do.

But then Google Maps are nowhere near as detailed as Windows Live, but of course MS suffers from not being ‘cool’ or ‘Web 2.0′.

The service is usable, and does have benefits but I think until they crack some of the issues, it’ll remain a ‘nice to have’. As you say, ‘hiding’ this feature in the Organizer suggests that it might not ever have been aimed at the masses??

By: Michael Air

Michael Air — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 03:32:20 +0000

Announced on the Flickr blog:
http://blog.flickr.com/flickrblog/2006/08/geotagging_one_.html

By: leisa.reichelt

leisa.reichelt — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 21:44:02 +0000

where’d you hear that?

By: Michael Air

Michael Air — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 18:07:15 +0000

They had 1.2 million photos geotagged within the first 24 hours. Obviously some people found it easy enough?