iCraig » GeoTagger

GPS track interpolation in iPhoto ’09?

craig — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 07:51:36 +0000

Anyone who would be interested has probably already heard about the Places feature of iPhoto ’09. Using embedded Google Maps. Once you’ve done that you can browse photos by location and make some very nifty photo albums with maps. There’s more to it than that but I’d be about the millionth person to review the new features of iPhoto ’09 if I did so, so I won’t. Instead I’m going to tell you about a feature that is missing, but one that Apple have clearly been playing with.
My Geotagger program has been out for a few years now and people have been happily (and least I think so) geotagging their photos. If this is done before importing them to iPhoto everything is fine, but doing it once they are already in iPhoto’s database means that iPhoto doesn’t know about the change and consequentially won’t draw these photos on the nice new maps Apple have added. So to find a solution for this I’ve been digging around in iPhoto’s database file. It’s a simple SQLite database but I haven’t fully solved it that part of the equation yet.
The interesting thing I found, and the reason I’m telling you about this before I have finished an update to Geotagger, is that in the database I found two unused tables. For those of you that don’t know about database and tables pretend I said I just found two very interesting lists. The tables are called SqGpsTracks and GpsTracksEventsJoin. What this tells me is that Apple were working on the ability to link a GPS track with an iPhoto event for people that may have a GPS Datalogger and a camera as separate devices. iPhoto would then be able to match up the time a photo was taken with the GPS log and work out where the photo was taken. This process is pretty well documented already and I’ve been doing it for ages using Jeffrey Early’s excellent GPSPhotoLinker. It could also mean the display of routes on the embedded maps, but that can’t be proven at this stage.

Though I welcome this feature for the masses I have never fully trusted iPhoto to do any editing of my pictures. I”m quite happy doing all the editing and geotagging before hand and just using iPhoto to store and display pictures, but for those that want an integrated solution this would definitely be a step forward.

UPDATE: Others have been discovering similar things, Adam looked in the nib files and found more proof that Apple is working on interpolation.

Geotagger 2 – beta testers needed

craig — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 07:11:52 +0000

I’ve been at my new job for two weeks now and I think my brain is finally starting to warm up after seven months of thinking of pretty much everything other than software development. So now I am pleased to announce Geotagger 2 is just around the corner. I’ve moved pretty much all the code into Objective-C rather than Applescript and thus been able to add a progress indicator to show how many images it has left to process. Personally I don’t want to see hundreds of photos of a city all tagged at a single point within in, but some people have good reasons for tagging lots at the same time and now they’ll know when it’s finished.

Before I start uploading it to bigger sites I’m inviting anyone checking this site to download version 2 and tell me how it goes. I only have one Mac here to test on, so I while I know it works on an Intel running OS X 10.5 I can’t be sure about anything else. So pleeeeease send me feedback.

I’ve also included the latest build of exiftool so it should work with any file type that exiftool can write GPS data to.

On the move

craig — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 22:41:56 +0000

Hello to everyone looking for tech support on GeoTagger or iPhotoToGoogleEarth. I’m in Japan at the moment and don’t have access to my source code or even a decent computer. It’ll be a few months before I set myself up again so if there are any problems during that time I won’t be able to fix them. I’ve heard that Google Earth 4.3 is having trouble rendering the KMZ files produced by iPhotoToGoogleEarth that worked fine with 4.2, but I can’t test it until I’m at a desk again. Watch this space for announcements and hold tight until then.
Thanks for your patience.

Back in the saddle

craig — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 08:18:11 +0000

I’m back from the trek and adjusting to being indoors again. Somethings are coming naturally but I’m having trouble starting any of the projects I thought up while I was away. Tomorrow is a big test, the return to work. 9 to 5 under fluorescent lights and in a chair at a desk. It’s going to be a bit of a shock I’m sure but as I’ve been telling people all the way along I’m lucky to have a job waiting for me, many other hikers had to quit their jobs and would now be facing interviews. My brain is still in warm-up mode and I’m in no condition to impress a panel of judges.

Soon I’ll be restarting work on my software projects. iPhotoToGoogleEarth will have one more release before I make a new version for iPhoto 7 (part of iLife ’08). I’ve some improvements for GeoTagger but it should be forwards compatible already. let me know if that isn’t the case.

If you’re wondering what I’ve been up to check out this little video clip, it shows 5 months of hiking on the PCT