Making location simple, by Jeffrey Veen

Making location simple

I've been a little embarrassed these passed few days about my complete obsession with the new mapping features in Flickr. It started with lost hours the day it came out, dragging and dropping my pictorial history with inane accuracy ("Hmmm... where was I standing in the park that day?")

There has always been excitement and buzz around location-based computing, but the Hello World always had to do with Starbucks texting a coupon to me as I walked by. But what Flickr has created is participatory and shows its seams through an API - two qualities that set smart web apps apart from the shovel-ware business models tries to foist every couple quarters.

The participatory nature of this app isn't all that new - people have been able to "geotag" photos for quite a while. Rather, the innovation comes from simplicity; no copy-and-paste coordinates, just drag the picture to the spot you took it. If Flickr's claim of over a million tagged images the first 24 hours is any indication, they got this one right.

But simplicity isn't just interface improvements, but acknowledging the right tool for the job. One of the things that has always impressed me about the iPod, for example, is that the devices have no capacity for editing metadata, deleting or moving songs, or any of the other mundane tasks of maintaining your music library. Instead, designers at Apple moved all those tasks to iTunes, exploiting your computer's keyboard, mouse, and screen real estate. Flickr takes the same approach. They could have waited for camera manufacturers to add GPS chips or asked cameraphone users to thumb in their location. They chose, however, to exploit the fact that metadata can be added asynchronously without much penalty.

Finally, by including a very easy to use API, Flickr ensures success by giving up control. Send in a properly formatted URL and get back a list of photos - so easy even I could get it to work. I can get at my data whenever I want, do with it what I please, and inspire mashups nobody's even yet considered. Don't like Yahoo's maps? Use Google's instead. Photos near an open WiFi hotspot? Hook up to the Plazes API.

Give people the tools to participate effortlessly, accept that they own their data, and remember your service is just one tiny piece of a much bigger experience. A simple formula for success.

This entry was written by Jeffrey Veen and posted 31 August 2006 at 8:09 PM. It was filed under Web Design.

Comments

1. On 31 August 2006 at 9:56 PM Dave S. wrote:

God it's nice to know I'm not the only one who obsessed.

http://mezzoblue.com/archives/2006/08/31/geotagging/

2. On 1 September 2006 at 12:47 AM Joshua Goldstein wrote:

Hi:

As a technologist, I thought you might be interested in contributing to this conversation:

A Conversation on Best Practices: New Technologies in Campus Civic Engagement

http://www.inanafricanminute.blogspot.com

Josh

3. On 1 September 2006 at 6:04 AM soxiam wrote:

I did not know about the drag-n-drop feature when I wrote a less than glowing review of flick geotagging functionality. Thanks for pointing that out.

http://www.soxiam.com/Notes/YahooAddsGeotaggingToFlickr

4. On 3 September 2006 at 1:02 AM Roger Shepherd wrote:

I don't know whether it's that I've just started working with geotagging

http://bloggershepherd.blogspot.com/2006/09/geolocation-of-photos.html

or whether it's Flikr recent adoption/promotion of geotagging, but geotagging seems to have become a hot issue recently.

I also see that SONY have launched a couple of GPS related items recently

http://bloggershepherd.blogspot.com/2006/09/sony-and-geolocation.html

5. On 6 September 2006 at 4:18 AM Eduardo Manchon wrote:

I believe Flickr Maps interface is brilliant, but I don't think Flickr accept that people own their data. Actually Flickr has ignored the standard geotagging sytem completely. Coordinates are not anymore shown because photos geotagged with the new geotagging inteface actually don't have coordinates. This is frustrating for the people that has been geotagging photos with a lot of effort previously.

You don't need to ignore coordinates in order to create a easy-to-use drag and drop system. We have a drag and drop geotagging system in Panoramio http://www.panoramio.com that uses Google Maps, and we don't ignore coordinates. In my opinion Flickr ignores coordinates for two reasons.

First, Yahoo Maps poor coverage for most of the World makes impossible exact geotagging. It doesn't make very much sense to care about coordinates when most of the photos are not exactly located.

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.

Flickr's geotagging interface is not designed for accuracy, but for massive geotagging, what it is perfect for some people and uses, but not for others.

Eduardo

6. On 13 September 2006 at 9:32 PM Simon Willison wrote:

Eduardo: photos do have co-ordinates (as standard lat/lon pairs) and those co-ordinates are exposed through the API. They aren't included as tags because doing so pollutes people's tag spaces.

I'm pretty sure that the guy who did much of the work building Flickr Maps (Dan Catt) is the guy who invented geotagging in the first place.

The really smart thing about the Flickr implementation is that the co-ordinates are stored along with an accuracy value representing how far out the map was zoomed when the point was added. This gives people an extra degree of control over the privacy of their exact location and also ensures that photos dropped at a higher zoom level (on to a city for example) are not incorrectly associated with a precise point.

7. On 16 September 2006 at 6:59 AM Kelly Planer wrote:

Hi, Jeff!

I just spoke with Steve this week - who made me wonder how all of my Calvin friends are doing - hope all is well! If you're ever in New York, please call!

8. On 18 September 2006 at 3:27 AM Nick Gentry wrote:

Hi Jeff
I am interested in the mapping features of Flickr and the manner in which it involves people around the central community of the city. I am setting up a similar site that acts as a city guide on a sensory level. I am having some difficulty selecting the correct right form of map, but I'm using the google maps API as a starting point. The site is still under construction but I would appreciate it if I could obtain some feedback from you. I intend to post you a sample of the site with a letter and feedback form. Would this be possible?

Kind Regards

9. On 18 September 2006 at 6:55 AM cheap web hosting wrote:

Well, ipod is indeed a obsession for me atleast. Are there any new features in Flickr, i would love to knwo about it.