There is an article on geotagging photos over at the New York Times, featuring, among other fine services, TripTracker.net:

“It’s kind of a geek obsession,” says Ms. Bennett, software engineer and journalist. “But it’s also a combination of the geek aspect, the community aspect and the love of good old-fashioned travel photography.”

They go on to say…

“The value may not be immediately apparent. But 10 years from now, nobody who’s geotagging their photos is going to regret it.”

We couldn’t agree more.

Update: The slideshow viewer now has its very own homepage. Check it out!

We recently updated the TripTracker photo slideshow interface. For a sample, click on the first thumbnail below and then the Play button:

(photos taken from the Thailand trip)

Feel free to use the JavaScript slideshow on your own personal web space (please have a look at the terms at the top of the JavaScript file). The interface to the slideshow is simple — insert the script source, initialize the viewer and photo links and then call the viewer.show() method. Here is an example:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://slideshow.triptracker.net/slide.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
<!--
  var viewer = new PhotoViewer();
  viewer.add('/photos/my-photo-1.jpg');
  viewer.add('/photos/my-photo-2.jpg');
  viewer.add('/photos/my-photo-3.jpg');
//--></script>
<a href="javascript:void(viewer.show(0))">Slideshow</a>

We’re also providing a bookmarklet that allows you to try out the slideshow on other web sites:

1. Bookmark the following link: Slideshow Bookmarklet (e.g. by dragging the link to your bookmark toolbar).
2. Visit a page with photo thumbnails, such as the page you are just reading.
3. Click on your bookmark to bring up the slideshow.

Note that the bookmarklet will only work properly on web pages that include thumbnails linking directly to the full-sized photos. In other cases, the viewer needs to be initialized explicitly using the method described above.

When reviewing TripTracker, people often mistake our map interface for Google Maps. Fact is, we developed the AJAX code ourselves. We care a lot about the presentation layer and wanted to have full control over how the photo gallery interacts with the map. (Not to mention that acquiring and processing hi-res satellite imagery is loads of fun.)

One area where it is hard to keep up with Google though is high resolution imagery coverage. Google Earth, for example, covers 20 percent of the landmass with 70 cm per pixel, some countries even up to 10 cm per pixel. That is why we are bringing together the best of both worlds — each trip page now has a link in the lower right:

Google Earth is a desktop application that combines satellite imagery, maps and geographic information — and in 3D. It runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. Give it a try and re-live your travel experience in flying mode:

Load KML

We recently changed the format of the XML files that the map interface uses to display trips. While it is not really a user-visible change, it will open up new possibilities for viewing and exporting your travel journals.

The format we use now is GeoRSS — Geographically Encoded Objects for RSS feeds. GeoRSS is a standard for encoding geographical information in regular RSS (or Atom) news feeds. We implemented the GeoRSS GML variant, using an Atom feed. Each trip is represented as a news feed so that feed entries correspond to trip entries. In addition to specifying a location for each trip entry, GeoRSS also allows us to encode the GPS track.

Here is an example of a GeoRSS feed:
http://triptracker.net/trip/727/georss.
And the resulting map:
http://triptracker.net/trip/727/map.

Since this is a just an extension of a news feed, you may also open it in your favorite feed reader. As GeoRSS gains recognition, we expect more feed readers to understand and display the geographical tags as well.

Flickr users can now create trips from photos hosted on Flickr, instead of uploading original photos from their computer. This will save you some bandwith [and hopefully save us some disk space ].

The feature should be especially appealing to those that already have geo-data embedded in their Flickr photos. The location of a photo can be established from the photo’s EXIF header or from Flickr tags (geobloggers.com format). A typical geotagged photo would include the following Flickr tags:

geotagged
geo:lat=48.3880
geo:lon=-123.5225

Feel free to try it out.

Note: The Flickr import feature is unavailable as of Jul. 2007, due to changes in the way Flickr allows third-party websites to access Flickr photos (the Flickr API). We hope to offer this feature again soon.

We’re happy to announce that TripTracker now supports the import of geotagged photos! Geotagged photos contain embedded geographical location information in the EXIF header section of JPEG images (see this page for a technical description of the relevant EXIF tags). TripTracker is now able to recognise and extract this geographical information from images, thereby eliminating the need to upload a separate GPS track file in order to set the location of photos automatically.

There are a number of tools that can be used for geotagging photos (note that the process is sometimes also called geocoding). The free WWMX Location Stamper and RoboGeo (commercial) are among the most popular tools. Some GPS-ready cameras, such as Nikon’s D1X and D2X, support geotagged photos out-of-the-box. If you’re the lucky owner of such a device, you’re all set to start sharing.

After months of hard work we are releasing our geo tagging and track visualization service to the public. This news was posted only on a few selected forums which is where we think it will capture the attention of tech savvy people, especially GPS enthusiasts. We want to hear your opinion and comments about this free service. Please use this thread for comment or use TripTracker forums to communicate with us: http://triptracker.net/forum/

TripTracker is currently in beta and is constantly improving (we hope). If you encounter a bug, we would be very grateful if you submit it to http://triptracker.net/forum/bugs/, and we will try to fix it as soon as possible.

We will keep working hard to improve the service. We already have a number of interesting features just waiting to be implemented. Help prioritize them by posting your wishes in this thread: http://triptracker.net/forum/ideas/

Currently, the Getting started and FAQ pages are in the works. If you have any specific question about the use of TripTracker, we will be happy to help you.

The TripTracker travel blogging site has finally launched. Cile and Ziga have submitted a few last-minute fixes and we are off.
With our launch we are making a promise to all our users to keep the site packed with nice features and still keep it simple to use.
Please send us requests, bugs and ideas for how to improve TripTracker and we promise we will try to fix every reported bug and fulfill every good idea you might have.
Enjoy!

Welcome to the TripTracker Blog, where Klika developers share their thoughts on the development of TripTracker.