TagMaps are a new way to visualize text on geographic maps. TagMaps can be used to communicate key characteristics of location-based data in an easy-to-understand way.

A TagMap can be embedded into into your website (for non-commercial use):

It’s not as useful as it might first appear though. The only tags that show are the most “interesting” (often just the most tags for an area), hence the above example for Salisbury shows “cathedral, Old Sarum, and Salisbury” and nothing more granular than that. And you have to click the “View on World Explorer” text at the top to actually see the photos. The tag “cathedral” actually disappears when you zoom in closer, for example. There’s some work to go, it seems.

I like the idea though – it could have some useful heritage applications, which could be especially useful as satellite and aerial photography is improved on the service. Imagine looking at the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape – a big area indeed. Seeing words like “tin” or “copper” or “engine house” etc etc could enable you to explore some photos and narrow down where to go and visit according to your interest.

One to watch as it develops.

Link: Yahoo TagMaps
Seen on: O’Reilly Radar: World Explorer, Explore Your Town With Flickr

This is a great move, since it can be quite daunting if you’re really into knowing (and seeing) where photos were taken, but don’t want to move over to rival Zooomr, or delve into some of the arcane geotagging browser extensions or 3rd party tools. It’s all done within Flickr’s Organizr, and it’s all drag and drop. You can even set levels of accuracy, i.e. associating photos with whole cities, or even down to street level.

Whilst this is great, it’s not actually that great if you live outside of the USA. Yahoo’s mapping for the UK, for example, is very basic. Angular lines mark major roads and railways, and that’s about as good as it gets (unless you want satellite photos of London).

So what do I do to geotag my photos on Flickr? I use the Localize Bookmarklet which was created by the talented aemkei, which uses Google Maps (which has excellent UK coverage). You simply drag the bookmarklet link to your bookmark bar (and rename it to something like “Flickr Geotag”). That’s it. When you’re viewing a photo in your photostream, simply click the bookmark, and the photo will be replaced with a Google map. Navigate to the spot where your photo was taken, and click. That’s it. Hit save, and the geotags will be inserted to your tag list, and a link to Google maps showing the location of the photo will be appended to your description.

At the moment (5th September 2006), this doesn’t add the photo directly into Flickr’s geodatabase, so you have to import them manually (thankfully, it imports all your newly geotagged photos in one go), by following this link (or access it from “Your Account“).

One imported, Flickr will show where the photo was taken as text, e.g. “Taken in London, England (map)” with a link to a Yahoo map which floats above Flickr when clicked. This is on the lower right of the screen, above the date and camera model information.

One observation is that the spatial database behind this all must be pretty powerful. This photograph of a butterfly was taken within the grounds of a medieval park, close to Salisbury in the UK. I geotagged it some time ago using the bookmarklet, and Flickr imported the coordinates when I did my first import a few days ago. I noted that Flickr shows that the photo was “Taken in Clarendon Park, England”. The underlying Yahoo engine (anyone know what it’s called?) has perfomed a spatial query and identified that the photo was taken within the boundary of the park. The fact that it’s a relatively obscure historical deer park reveals that Yahoo’s spatial database must be rather detailed, and the engine that powers it, rather powerful.

It makes me think (and hope) that improved mapping for the UK is just around the corner…