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TagMaps
Daily Ink
Stored in: Flickr News
Posted On: January 18 2007
By: Bryan Partington
Archival Photo
Yahoo! Research Berkeley has just put out this really keen flash application that takes geotagged flickr photos and clusters them together on the map based on tags.
Wait a second. that's too simple. that can't be it.
Ah, but it is!
Though it sounds like a fairly simple idea, TagMaps provides a great way to discover concentrations of photos and the reasons why they are so very concentrated.
Hovering over San Francisco, for example, you'll see concentrations labeled "Golden Gate Bridge", "Palace of Fine Arts" and "Alcatraz". You know, the kind of places you'd expect to draw a lot of tourist snaps but that you might miss in all the random dottage of the standard flickr interface. Less clicking to discover what all the photographic fuss is about in a certain area? That's a very good thing.
I find it more useful to apply to places without as much renown, where photo ops might be more difficult to track down. Hover over Edmonton, my somewhat boring home town, and you'll quickly find the Muttart Conservatory. Edmonton doesn't have very many picturesque places, so it is grand to have an interface that allows at least one of them to stand out.
There is also an interface that only shows night photos, and another one that involves Yahoo! Trips instead of flickr.
It is all so very natural and intuitive. In fact, it is something I'd like to see melded into the default geo-tag interface. It's simple enough that it wouldn't take anything away from those dots we've come to know and love.
Otherwise, in Flickr News:
- Previously: "Ho Ho Ho" Notes!
Utata Ink is a daily publication edited by Bryan Partington (striatic). Photos used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and obtained via the flickr API unless otherwise noted. To make a contribution to Ink, please visit Ink Me.
