After dabbling with EveryTrail.com yesterday, I decided to check out a few alternative websites that also offered display of geotagged photos: Panoramio, Picasa (both operated by Google), Flickr, and Locr.

Of the four, Picasa, Flickr, and Locr read the geo-metadata of the images and displayed them without a hitch, whereas Panoramio failed to display my images at all. I liked the minimalist displays offered by Picasa and Flickr but, for me, Flickr had the aesthetic edge; the photo thumbnails on the Picasa map are a nice touch, but result in a cluttered view at standard zoom levels. Locr is capable of generating a slideshow display, complete with auto-generated location-specific facts at the top of the page. Very nice!

Each of these sites has an upload limit (monthly, total, or both), but each also offers additional hosting space and relaxed uploading limits if upgrading to a paid account. As far as I could tell, none of these services offered embedding of generated maps into a webpage, at least not directly. Also, each focuses solely on photos, compared with EveryTrail — admittedly, designed for a different audience — which is capable of displaying photos, video, and GPS track, waypoint, and altitude info in an embedded map.

Depending on your needs, and where you already host your photos, any of these sites are quite capable of displaying your geotagged shots (I'll revisit Panaramio — I suspect user error!).

For me, EveryTrail comes out on top. The site is well designed and intuitive, with an active user base, and the ability to host and map both photos and video is a treat. What really sets it apart from the other sites is its inclusion of GPS data on the map. Track and waypoint information provide much more context to geotagged images than simple location information as images can be associated with a particular trip and browsed in sequence. Move your cursor over an embedded map and you're presented with the option to display trip statistics: speed and altitude changes over time during the trip. Best of all, the site is free, has great support (that metadata problem I had yesterday? — fixed, thanks to the forums), and Chris McCarty wrote to say that they have no upload limits. Excellent! And if you own an iPhone, there's even more to love.
 


Comments

genegeek
08/03/2010 7:21pm

Hi. Thanks for the great post. I have signed up for EveryTrail and have uploaded some runs. However, I'm not the fastest person around so would like to hide my speed - do you know how to do this? The forums aren't helping and I thought you might now off the top of your head.
This website has a good source of info for education tech!

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Dave Riddell link
08/03/2010 8:02pm

Thanks for the kind words!

I poked around on EveryTrail for the info you're after and tried to find a way to hide speed info on my tracks, but can't find an option to do so. I'd suggest hitting them up on Twitter — @everytrail — or email — team *at* everytrail *dot* com.

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Rebecca Leaman
08/04/2010 3:28pm

Geotagging websites: an update - pathways | an educator's notebook http://bit.ly/cNs0Hh

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Rebecca Leaman
08/04/2010 3:29pm

Get out there walking - need to see more :)

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Dave Riddell link
08/04/2010 3:30pm

We're off to Grand Manan this weekend — I'll report back next week :)

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Rebecca Leaman
08/04/2010 3:31pm

Looks like good weather for Grand Manan trip. Have a good one (and watch out for puffins, I hear they're carnivorous down there)!

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