next*

Almost two and a half years after it was released, the ZoneTag prototype from the group formerly known as Y!RB is still out there. ZoneTag remains some people's favorite application for geotagging photos and uploading to Flickr (owners of Nokia phones, feel free to try). Interestingly, since launch, ZoneTag had been used on numerous cross-country trips - at least one done on motorbike, and one with a truck - yeah, that one was me.

However, there's a new outstanding achievement in the ZoneTagging-coast-to-coast category. Joe Rehana, aka Joe Trek, has been ZoneTagging his way from San Francisco to Maryland on his bicycle inline skates. No "motor" there. We've been following him since the start of the trek as we noticed (thanks, Rahul) his photos in the ZoneTag stream. Now, Joe is still in California (see his picture map), but at this pace, he's likely to make it to Maryland long before the Democratic primaries are over beginning of the fall semester.

Yes, the future of travel photos is almost here. This is just what Scott Adams wishes for, complete with easy annotation of the photo's content based on your location (click on Joe Trek's photo below to see the tags). The nature of consumer capture and sharing of media is changing these very days. One on hand, the Nokia N95 and other high-end cameraphones and location-enabled cameras now merge high-quality imaging (and video), location awareness, text-input capabilities, and, most importantly, network connectivity (did anyway say Eye Fi?) in a device that's in the hands of millions of, you know, regular people. On the other hand, Flickr and other services offer APIs for posting and adding metadata to photos that help disseminate as well as archive all this content. At the end of his trip, or even during, Joe Trek will have the set of photos geotagged, annotated, explained, and archived till the end of time on the Flickr servers. This should be the experience of every vacationer out there. Why wouldn't it?

p.s. Joe, if you're reading, may I suggest using Fire Eagle to have your location automatically updated on your blog?

[updated: Joe is not biking, he's inline skating with his gear in a baby jogger - holy @$%*!]

Popularity: 50% [?]

The world is a big place. There are thousands of maps out there that provide unique details about any given destination. MapMixer is a new site that combines those maps with Yahoo! Maps to give you a better view of the world.

It's easy to mix your own map. Upload an image of your map, use our layering tool to align it with Yahoo! Maps and we'll do the rest! Your map will have all the features of Yahoo! Maps (zooming, panning). You can also syndicate it on your own site or blog.

Who built it

• Adam Chang
• Nimit Maru

What people are saying

Launch: Merge Your Map on Yahoo Maps with MapMixer, Lifehacker, Gina Trapani
"Really neat tool for folks who don't want to have to draw a whole new map when they've got one already—just scan and upload to MapMixer and you've got it online."

Yahoo Launches 2 New Hacks - Interview with Bradley Horowitz from Yahoo, Read/WriteWeb, Sean Ammirati
"The user simply finds a couple intersection points on both the map and his/her image and then the system automatically morphs them together. In our interview, Bradley explained the process as being 'like a big sheet of rubber, the map is kind of stretched and rotated, and then applied to the Yahoo Map.'"

Yahoo MapMixer: The easiest way to add an overlay, Ogle Earth, Stefan Geens
"MapMixer lets you do three things that Google's tools don't... I can't help wishing that maps made with Yahoo MapMixer were exportable as a KMZ file today, so I could use this tool to create overlays I can show in a KML-savvy client of my choice."

Popularity: 13% [?]