Bug-Man’s Blog

I’ve wanted some good integration between my Flickr Photo Feed and Google Earth for some time now but what’s out there isn’t that awesome. I’ll discuss a few things –

# Flickr

Flick’r own KML (Google Earth) feed is good however, restricted to the last 20 photos or so, which is really awful. This means that anyone browsing your photos in Google Earth will only see a handful.

# Metal Toad Media

These guys provide a fantastic feed which I use all the time! Check it out. Once installed it will scan Flickr for the nearest 200 photos (sorted by most interesting) and insert little pins on the map. You can then click the pins and view the picture. This is awesome, as it means you can visit anywhere on the planet and as well as looking at the aerial view you can see all the photos people have taken of that area, too! Because it sorts by most interesting first, the further you zoom in on any one space the more you see. Every time you move around the map it updates the feed and within a few seconds Flickr photos begin appearing. It’s great! I recommend it.

http://kmlphotos.metaltoad.com/

What would be great is a version of the above that works on a single user’s feed (or group/tag/search) only!

# Trippermap

These guys have a couple of great tools. The Trippermap Geotagger (free) will let you Geotag Flickr photos using Google Earth instead of the clunky horrible Yahoo map. Basically, when enabled, you line up the crosshair with the coordinates you want to mark a photo or photos, click the link in the bubble and it will take you to the trippermap.com page where you can update any photo. Because it uses the Flickr API there’s no need to sign up to their services or anything like that! This is the tool I use to tag my photos. I need to get myself a better GPS system

Their website offers you the ability to create your own Flash Google Map with your own photos all over it however, if you want the ability to create a Google Earth KML you need to subscribe to their Premium service (for $10). No thanks. Not for a simple KML feed!

# loc.alize.us

http://loc.alize.us/ is a website that provides a fairly flexible Google Map & Flickr Mash-Up, and it’s pretty good, too. Here’s a small version which shows the map with only my photos:

Apparently this small version only shows the last 99 photos but there’s a full-sized version which is much easier to use and shows more photos.

These guys also offer a service that will let you Geotag a Flickr photo however, you need to go to Flickr first, click the photo, click a Bookmark and then find your location in the small Flash Google Maps window. It’s all a bit slow.

# Yahoo! Pipe by steeev

steeev has created a Yahoo Pipe which will create a KML of your last 500 geotagged images. All you need to do is put in your Flickr username (as NSID) and it will output a KML of your photos which you can use with Google Earth! The only problem is, of course, that it outputs a KML file that has a static list of all of your pictures, so if you install it permanently, it’s no good for new content.

You can copy the link that outputs the KML and visit it over and over again, eg. here is the link to my photo feed. Click on that any time and it should bring up a KML of the latest photos in my feed. I guess that’s one cheater’s way of doing it but the draw-back is you have to click on the link from a web browser every time.

I’d be interested to hear if anyone else has found any better tools!

It’s fun being a tourist but I’ve never like to think of myself as one. I am enjoying moving around the city and taking in the sights, however slowly. With Lindsay working every day it leaves us only the weekends to do anything, because as soon as it hits 4 o’clock in London, it starts getting dark. Really dark.

Lindsay and I have now got to know our own area very well, which I think is a good thing because this is our home for the next 12 months at least. This weekend we went up on the London Eye at night time and travelled out to the Tower Bridge area, albeit rather late in the day and we didn’t have much time to do anything else. I would have liked to have gone up but we are being a bit careful with our finances until things get back in shape after that hefty rent payment! These are some things we’ll come back and re-visit just as soon as I feel more safe

Here are a couple of shots from our ‘flight’ on the Eye and the Tower Bridge! You can check out more over at my Flickr feed. I have been keeping it up-to-date as regularly as possible!

The Tower Bridge	The Tower Bridge
The London Eye	The Palace of Westminster
The IMAX Building in Waterloo	A London Eye Capsule

Don’t forget you can view more at Flickr.

I’ve been Geotagging as many photos using Flickr as I can so that you can see exactly where they were taken from on the surface of the Earth, using Flickr’s maps or Google Earth (but Google Earth only receives the last 20. Grr.) I think my next project will have to be automated geotagging.

PS. I thought this was a great little picture with the caption included

“Welcome home from your holiday!”

PPS.
I won’t mention much about how the job hunting is going at this stage in case I’m being ego-surfed by a prospective employer… (Hi Employer!!) and perhaps I’ll blog about it all later once it’s all over and I’m gainfully employed. Suffice it to say there is plenty of work out there and I’m still applying and at the same time waiting for the whole Christmas/New Years period to pass over so that all the HR departments can return to normal.