Whhaaaat?

OK, a couple of explanations here. The Big Brother we’re talking about here is from George Orwells “1984”. And the reference is to the explosion of geotagging (new word to teach your spell check) coming down the road.

And I repeat: Whaaaat?

First of all much of the new technology which we’ll be covering has been developed by the security personnel of the world. Face detection, character recognition, GPS satellite tracking, etc. have all been advanced due to needs other than your driving and photographic pleasure.
Governments want to know where you are, and where who, or anything they want to know about, is. Hence the Big Brother reference.
So now you can be your own “Eye in the Sky” by tracking your life as you see fit. Many of us do it now with directions via Google Maps or your cars GPS unit.
The other part of the “whaaaaat” is adding data to your digital photos by a connection with a GPS device, called geotagging You know that every time you click the shutter on a digital camera, data is created on the photos file. Time, lens,camera,shutter speed,f/stop, size of file, etc. This becomes just another piece of data information.
The way some digital cameras do it, is by a direct connection by cable to a GPS device.The device from Merax called PhotoTrack GPS in this video allows you to use ANY camera , as long as the internal clocks are in sync.
(Please note: this unit is only available for PC right now. MAC compatibility is expected in Jan. 2008)
Now one of the uses described in the video is location scouting. Having been a scout and hiring them on a regular basis, there is more to it than the aerial view, maps, longitude latitude, time of day etc. You have to know how to get a crew and equipment in and out, plus legal jurisdictions, direction photo was taken and more.

Plus the issue of reliability and accuracy comes into play. Some GPS devices are accurate with a block. Some within inches. Depends on your needs.

This is going to be a huge growth area to watch, as tagging digital images with as much useful information as possible becomes the standard. And of course the ease of operation will be key. Lots of players trying to do it now, but it’s pretty cumbersome and very time consuming. Here is one simple solution. On the pro side, make sure you look at Red Hen and their Blue2Can systems.

Hmmmmm…. how about a camera with wireless upload and tracking data all in one? It’s here, but very expensive and not too practical. It’ll be coming to the general consumer real soon, I promise you.
We’re close with the eye-fi card but the geotagging still needs to go through a computer.
Darn.