GPS pictures
GPS pictures Me and my short attention span. I've had a GPS enabled camera cell phone for a year and I never tried using the "attach GPS info to photo" option.

I was at the TokyoPC User's Group meeting and Mie of TokyoTidbits.com was showing off moblogging including GPS.

As she showed it I thought to myself, hmmm, I wonder if my phone has that feature. I knew it did but at the time I got the phone I really didn't have any interest and so I promptly forgot about it but I looked at the menus and there it was "Attach Position To Photo" (in Japanese of course). So, I gave it a try to see what it would do.

I was hoping it would put the GPS info directly into the JPEG photo. The EXIF standard has support for GPS info embedded into JPEG photos but no such luck. Instead it adds a link to your e-mail (at least when you e-mail the picture).

Here's the photo (taken during the meeting)



and here's the link from the e-mail the photo was attached to

http://www.at-navi.com/map/dispMap.jsp?datum=0&unit=0&lat=+35.40.04.57&lon=+139.42.23.40

Click it and you get a map. Sadly it's off by about 100 meters. I'm not sure if that's beacuse I was in the basement of some building and the signal was bad or if it's just because my phone is an older generation of GPS.
Comments:

off by 100m [ e ]

The location that got reported was probably the location of the cell tower that you were connected to. You can sometimes get o.k. cell reception in a basement, but you won't get a useable GPS signal. GPS absolutely requires line of sight to the satellites in the sky.

posted by anon_JamesMacMillanJune 23, 2003 at 13:46

What GPS/camera/cell phone do you have? [ e ]

I'm writing an article on GPS location stamping of photos, saw your item about your phone's capability, and am interested to know what's available in Japan but not here in the USA.

posted by GailSeptember 7, 2003 at 16:42

GPS phones [ e ]

for AU, all of the phones on this page that have a icon with 2 spheres are GPS phones and every one with a camera icon has a camera.  You'll notice that except for a few special phones at the bottom there are no cell phones without cameras.

J-Phone doesn't sell any GPS phones although all their phones have cameas and one of their phones places PS1 like games.

Docomo appears to sell only one GPS phone and it is not something that most people would know about meaning it's not part of their main lines of phones they push everywhere, it's more like a special order kind of thing.

I would say that AU is hoping that GPS is one reason people would go for AU over the other 2 major companies.  Unfortunately, using the net on your cell phone is still too slow.  Downloading a webpage or map can take 30 seconds to 2 minutes.  That might not sound slow but it adds up quickly.  Just a few pages and you've been futsing with the phone for 10-15 minutes.

Personally I think if the pages came down in less than 1 second the usages of the web on phones in general would explode and GPS phones would actually be useful for more people.  I had tried several times to use my phone to find stuff around me but it was so slow I gave up.

posted by greggmanSeptember 8, 2003 at 1:44

GeoTags in EXIF headers [ e ]

Just had an interesting discussion on the JapanBloggers mailing list about GPS locations embedded in blog entries or photo galleries. We got some good ideas coming.

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posted by www.in-duce.netOctober 9, 2003 at 1:28

GPS phones [ e ]

So I bought a Handy GPS from Garmin 3 weeks ago that I received last week. Turned out the reception in Tokyo is pretty bad *thanks* to the high buildings. The plan was to record all the GPS coordinates of the pictures I take...

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posted by www.in-duce.netOctober 9, 2003 at 1:30