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The Internet Technology

Vacation Photos That Inform Instead of Bore 129

Posted by Zonk from the that-pool-looks-awesome dept.
A News.com story discusses the increasing trend towards adding metadata to casually created content. Their discussion centers around vacation photos taken with increasingly sophisticated cameras, and uploaded to ever more feature-rich websites. These photos, taken on a whim by snap-happy tourists, become invaluable for people wanting to follow in their footsteps. "It's the odd juxtapositions of randomly plotted photos that may be the most surprising--and useful--to travelers with more obscure interests. For example, fans of graffiti can search the word, 'graffiti,' and 'New York City' at Flickr.com/map, and pull up photos of freshly painted tags, all plotted with pushpins on a clickable Yahoo map. A search for 'Dumbo Brooklyn graffiti,' for example, finds some 99 photos, including the infamous 'Neck Face' tag, spray-painted on a brick warehouse at Jay and Front Streets in Brooklyn. Try finding that in a guidebook."
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Vacation Photos That Inform Instead of Bore More

Vacation Photos That Inform Instead of Bore

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  • Cant you do that with Google street (when they get it all up and going) i can see this as more updated, but with Google street you can see "more"

  • Neck Face (Score:4, Informative)

    by magicchex ( 898936 ) <mdanielewicz@gma i l . c om> on Sunday June 10, 2007 @06:34PM (#19460983)
    I had to search for "Neck Face" specifically to find it, as the suggested search terms brought up 700+ photos, not the 99 claimed.

    The Face Neck tag can be found here [flickr.com].

    • Re:Neck Face (Score:5, Insightful)

      by OS24Ever ( 245667 ) * <trekkie@nomorestars.com> on Sunday June 10, 2007 @06:40PM (#19461029) Homepage Journal
      This is the problem i've had with meta-tagging. Someone uses a tag, and then 500 other people abuse it the second day, and it exponentially compounds so that it's hard to find things again.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by timeOday ( 582209 )
        Manual tagging is useless, mainly because most people won't bother at all but also due to spamming, trolling, incompleteness, etc. That's one reason the "semantic web" will never happen.

        Automated tagging, on the other hand, is coming along nicely. Time and location stamping are pretty obvious (and very helpful), but I think within just a few years the software to automatically, accurately retrieve photos of specific people and places will be common as well. Leaving all your photos in a big directory wit

        • There is at least one decent solution to the problem of collaborative image tagging:
          http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8246463 980976635143

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Eivind ( 15695 )

          Tagging doesn't need to be perfect to be useful. There are infact lots of tourist-photos of grafitti in new-york tagged with "grafitti", so if you're looking for them, it's possible and indeed simple to find them. True enough there's also a million photos *NOT* tagged with "grafitti", but nevertheless with grafitti in the motive or even *as* the motive.

          Claiming that manual tagging is useless because it's incomplete and inconsistent is like claiming that Google-search is useless because it is based on page

      • I used to live in the building with the'Neck Face' tag that the article references--57 Jay Street, also home to R&R Frames and the DUMBA arts collective. My living room windows were right under the tag. There's a great view if you walk down Jay street from the F train stop at York street--look a little to the right of straight ahead, basically directly north, and you should see it.

        http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=57+Jay+Str eet,+brooklyn&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=48.28737 3,82 [google.com]

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by pasun ( 1061392 )
          You're right. Neck Face's tags can be a little basic. His art [newimageartgallery.com] isn't bad though.

  • tagging (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Tags only work when they're properly weighted against the content of the media.
    For example, Slashdot edits out various tags claiming abuse and trolls yet tags have not proven themselves to be effective for Slashdot. Now if Slashdot saw that "dupe" was only entered once but "science" or "exoplanets" were entered 10 times then the dupe tag would be easily ignored while the tags added by more responsible participants come to the fore.
    Unfortunately Slashdot refuses to acknowledge its paying user base (and ad cl

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by pimpimpim ( 811140 )
      Apart from the cheap Zonk bashing, good point. The current tags for this article are 'internet' and 'technology', which I would say covers about 25-50% of all slashdot articles. Also, using such tags makes them overlap with the already existing category system, so one of them is redundant.

      The way the tags are now they are no good in retrieving the article, as they are not specific enough. 'photo, tagging, metadata' would be a better way then.

      The way the tags were before they were also no good in retriev

  • Glorifying Vandalism (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I looked up "Selfish disregard for neighborhoods and private property" and came up with those grafitti images. Tagging is the equivalent of a dog pissing on a hydrant but with less creativity.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I used to know a guy who had a six foot high concrete wall around two sides of his property, he had a busy street right in front of his house. One morning he came out and found nearly the entire wall had been spray painted with an anti-war mural. It was technically an act of vandalism and selfish disregard for private property but he said he actually liked it more than a solid white wall and thought it was pretty cool artwork. He wanted to keep it but the city eventually forced him to have it removed after
      • Okay, and for every story that you can dredge up where someone was happy with having their property "artistically vandalized" I can probably find at least ten where the opposite was true. If the people involved with putting up that mural really wanted to get their message out, and the guy really had no problem with it, then there would have been no harm in asking for PERMISSION first.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by QuantumG ( 50515 )
          I understand where you're coming from man.. and in places where the council can force you to clean it up, at your cost, it's definitely wrong, but the thing is, when you build a wall facing a public place, it's not completely your wall anymore. It's a public wall. Personally, I think that if the public is free to do what they want with your wall (say, if the council wants to paint it) then you shouldn't be forced to repaint it at your expense if a minority of the public does what the majority don't like w
          • No, if it's on my property it's MY WALL. By your line of reasoning, since the wall of my house faces the public they'd have a right to paint what they want on it. That'd ludicrous. If you want to paint something then there's no harm in getting permission first. At that point it ceases being vandalism and becomes legitimate art.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by QuantumG ( 50515 )
              It's not "my line of reasoning".. it's common law. Go look it up. Your property line is defined by where you build that wall. Doesn't matter if you build it 10 feet into where you think your property line starts. A public facing wall is half yours.. the half that faces your property. The other half belongs to the public. If the local council wants to paint your wall, there's nothing you can do about it. If they pass a law that states that anyone can paint that wall, again, there's nothing you can do
              • No, you provide proof. If you're going to claim something then you need to be able to back it up. The onus is on you, not me.

                Your property line is defined by where you build that wall. Doesn't matter if you build it 10 feet into where you think your property line starts.

                Now that's absolute crap in any society that has any concept of private property. If my property line goes to the sidewalk and I have a wall 10 feet from the sidewalk, the outer side of that wall does NOT become public property. That would b

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by QuantumG ( 50515 )
                  All I can tell you is that this is common law. I can't tell you where you can go look it up in your locale, cause I am not in your locale. I got a better idea for you though.. it's really easy for you to find out if I am lying. Just go paint YOUR wall some ugly ass color and see how long it takes before you are told to paint over it. Then, when you refuse, see how long it takes for the council to just paint over it with whatever color they like. Then go to court and claim that you have the right to pai
                  • The fact that you can't even quote the damn law kinda casts doubt on your claims that it's "very old and very clear". Don't quote it for my municipality, quote it for ANY municipality. I think your recollection of this law is much like a Pirate's recollection that you can download pirated media and use it for 24 hours legally. And even were this now mythical law to exist in the majority of municipalities, it still has no bearing whatsoever on the acts of a vandal with a spray can, so the point is moot.

                    And a

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Myopic ( 18616 )
        a lot of people complained about a few parts they considered "obscene".

        Oh, yeah, I think I saw that. Was it the one with Bush and Blair anally raping Saddam standing on one foot with jumper cables clipped to his balls? And Bush is holding some WMD behind his back with his right hand, while handing cash to Halliburton with his left, and Halliburton is dancing on the graves of weeping Iraqi mothers? And Bush has piles of dog shit falling out of his mouth? I don't see what was so obscene about it.

    • Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)

      by Frosty Piss ( 770223 )
      I got THIS [google.com]

  • Privacy (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ushering05401 ( 1086795 ) on Sunday June 10, 2007 @06:43PM (#19461041) Journal
    About ten years ago I read a sci-fi story about a private investigator who had one ace up her sleeve.. She aggregated and mined vacation photos from the web using facial recognition software to track people when they were otherwise off the map. The plot line revolved around tracking someone who appeared in the background in something like two out of several million web-posted photos.

    Not a terribly good story, but kinda interesting all the same. The author pointed out that with the number of recording devices constantly on the increase, and the impulse people have to 'share' their photos on the web, it would not require a big brother type scenario to see personal privacy become a thing of the past... even if you take hardcore measures to hide.

    Oh, and the suggested google search to find 'neck face' returns a lot more than 99 photos.

    Regards.
    • "...even if you take hardcore measures to hide." From what I've seen, most of those who go 'hardcore' aren't really taking measure to hide online. However, they do seem to make a good wage.
    • To me, "hardcore" includes altering your appearance so you don't get spotted at random.

      • To me, "hardcore" includes altering your appearance so you don't get spotted at random.
        That works well until the plastic surgeon who worked on you shows off the before and after shots on his website to advertise for himself.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Pope ( 17780 )
        "She got her looks from her father. He's a plastic surgeon." Groucho Marx.

    • Re:Privacy (Score:4, Funny)

      by jollyreaper ( 513215 ) on Sunday June 10, 2007 @10:23PM (#19462103)

      Not a terribly good story, but kinda interesting all the same. The author pointed out that with the number of recording devices constantly on the increase, and the impulse people have to 'share' their photos on the web, it would not require a big brother type scenario to see personal privacy become a thing of the past... even if you take hardcore measures to hide.
      I have three words for you: Groucho Marx glasses. Solved.
      • You may have been joking, but wearing a mask in public is illegal in many jurisdictions. There is no escape, Big Brother demands that you be easily identifiable and carry your papers with you at all times :)

      • You may have been joking, but wearing a mask in public is illegal in many jurisdictions. There is no escape, Big Brother demands that you be easily identifiable and carry your papers with you at all times :)

        Then I guess it's a question of how good these algorithms are. Could properly applied facial prosthetics throw it off, trick the sensors? Or would the kind of makeup that would throw off the computer be impractical for long-term use in public areas, i.e. make you look weird to human observers?

        I suppose the only option left is to just hack the eyes of every observer and put the Laughing Man logo over your face...oh wait, am I confusing real life and anime again? Drat.

    • I just read "The Green Leopard Plague" by Walter Jon Williams (c) 2003.

      Similar use of public photos to track the past of someone. Not "vacation" photos, so maybe unrelated or an inspiration for a later story... actually, sounds a lot the same - "she", "otherwise off the map", "recognition software"...

      See if you remember the author/story, if it was really "ten" years ago. Maybe it was only 3 or 4 years ago, or maybe it is a "Todd Goldman" moment...

      • It was in a regional semi-pro zine I believe... way too small for WJW. I think I have read the story you are talking about as well... Did it appear in one of Dozois's best of anthologies?

        Anyhow, I will see if I still have a copy.

        If you are into Sci-Fi short work you can e-mail me @ ushering.sleeps(at)gmail.com.

        I haven't had time to read up on the field in about 18 months (been involved in a startup) and would like some recommendations. I have yet to get through the submissions for my own publication which

  • Camera with LCD keyboard (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jshriverWVU ( 810740 ) on Sunday June 10, 2007 @06:50PM (#19461067)
    What would be nice is if a high-end camera had a basic Palm-like OS where the user could use the preview screen as a touch screen with a virtual keyboard. That way when you're taking pictures metadata could be added on the fly. While I'm dreaming built-in wifi would be nice :)

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by MobileTatsu-NJG ( 946591 )
      "What would be nice is if a high-end camera had a basic Palm-like OS where the user could use the preview screen as a touch screen with a virtual keyboard. That way when you're taking pictures metadata could be added on the fly. While I'm dreaming built-in wifi would be nice :)"

      My Treo 700p does something like that. You can put captions on the photo, draw doodles on it, and even record voice notes and attach to the photo. The problem is actually finding the time to do it. I took a lot of photos at Disney

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by markom ( 220743 )
        Wouldn't it be much cooler to have voice recognition software on the camera? That way you can spend more time enjoying the content you are photographing, instead of spending minutes and minutes inserting tags using 2" touch screen. With voice software, you'd just say "nice photo of blonde girl in front of some grafitti". Camera would then convert that into appropriate tags. Etc.
        • That's what I'm saying, the Treo lets you do that. The problem is finding the time. It's easier to just go through them all at the end of the day, usually.
          • My camera has a virtual keyboard on the screen and I don't use it for the same reason - time. Who wants to document 1000 photos while they are still experiencing their holiday, better to wait until you get home and sort out the 100 photos that are worth keeping.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by mobby_6kl ( 668092 )
          Reliable voice recognition is probably a little too much to ask from a camera, but why not simply record an audio clip with the description, and then run voice recognition on it on the PC?

          My Panasonic FZ-5 (which is already what, 2 generations old?) has this feature, you simply turn it on in the menu and then after each shot you can record up to around 5 seconds of comments. The camera stores the comment in a separate mov file with the image thumbnail for video. Rip out the audio with mplayer, run voice rec

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by fbjon ( 692006 )

            in urban environments this could be traffic or gunfights
            Yeah, this happens all the time when I'm on vacation.
    • Many cameras have the option to record an audio note associated with an image. It's not ideal, but it's at least a quick way to save some information before you forget it. I also end up taking a number of context photos to help me out later; for example, at the zoo, take a picture of the sign that gives you information about the animal, or a photo of the street signs near an interesting building. I don't plan to include these images in the album but they help remind me where I was and what I was doing.

    • Re:Camera with LCD keyboard (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Sunday June 10, 2007 @07:46PM (#19461377) Homepage
      What would be nice is a nice point and shoot digital that was affordable, had decent lenses and did n ot take a week to take a photo.

      I use digital SLR cameras, when I press the shutter, it takes that photo within 2-20 milliseconds. That exact moment you were trying to capture was captured successfully. All point and shoots piss me off as they delay from .25 to almost 1 second to take the damned photo, that exact moment is long gone. That fricking sucks when you know what you are doing to take a good photo.

      I like the portability of a point and shoot. When I'm off riding on the recumbent I hate having a SLR on my neck and would love a nice point an shoot, but I want one that take a photo the exact millisecond I press the shutter (if it's on) I want decent glass lenses that dont give either purple fringing (Like all Olympus digitals) or out of focus at the edge (like all Kodak digitals) or bizzare focus decisions. (Like all current Canon digitals Point and shoots. Earlier canon like the A20 were incredible)

      Get rid of movie mode, audio, GPS, Loran, Cellphone, video playback, mp3, or Video games and give me a digital point and shoot camera that does not suck.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by maxume ( 22995 )
        Is that 20 milliseconds with autofocus(I really have no idea...)?

        My Nikon Coolpix 5700 takes a picture pretty quick once it has decided what it is taking the picture of. The first several Coolpix cameras were among the first good consumer level digital cameras. The later ones are a lot more point and shoot(so no manual aperture or shutter control), but they seem pretty decent(and you can usually put it into a mode that works ok for the light you have).

        • Is that 20 milliseconds with autofocus(I really have no idea...)?

          Definitely not. It's 20 msec from shutter depress to actuation.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by mobby_6kl ( 668092 )
        I guess a lot depends on whether the "point and shoot" camera you're looking for is one which is not SLR based or one which fits in a shirt pocket.

        If it's the former, you might want to have a look at the Panasonic FZ- cameras [dpreview.com]. They're still somewhat smaller than most SLRs, and they don't suck. The shutter lag is around 0.009 or 0.07 seconds [dpreview.com], assuming you don't want the camera to perform any fancy auto focus or IS. The larger number includes the time it takes to actually display the image on the LCD. The Lei
      • I bought a Canon PowerShot A20 a long time ago (6-8 years?) anyway even at 2 megapixel with the highest settings I still love the quality. Plus it has optical zoom, (can't stand digital zoom). Even though it's old and 5-6+ megapixel cameras are out I just haven't found a need to upgrade. I'm still happy with 1600x1200 images that are crisp. Some newer cameras I've checked out with 6 megapixels when compared look grainy and just horrible. Almost like you took 35mm, printed and scanned at high res. Might hav
        • According to dpreview.com, your camera only does ISO 100. Newer cameras like my A510 do 200 and 400 by increasing the voltage on the analog sensor, which then looks noisier. Sometimes it's still preferable to having a slower shutter and getting blurry photos. I've decided I can live with ISO 200 in some situations, but the 400 is drastically worse. The newest compact cameras offer ISO 800 and 1600 but they're all basically useless modes.

          What your camera also has going for it is larger photoreceptors bec

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Eivind ( 15695 )

        Bootup-time tend to be horrible too. Sometimes you want to take a picture *now* -- not 15 seconds from now when the camera finished booting. (ok, so that is sligthly exxagerating)

        Particularily annoying in a small point-and-shoot camera because those are precisely the ones you bring to places where you *don't* want to spend a lot of time and effort taking photos.

        My DSLR can take the first photo 0.2 seconds after you flick the thumb-switch for "on", which is essentially instant, you don't manage to put it

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ukemike ( 956477 )
        Gee you're riding your bike, so the field of focus is changing constantly. Glare from windows and cars is probably playing havoc with the light level. You want your camera to be point-and-shoot, and have good focus and good exposure. That's asking a lot of a pocket sized camera.

        The main thing that takes time during the delay between pushing the button and the actual exposure is the camera auto-focusing and auto exposing. SLRs are quick because YOU make the focus and exposure decision, all it has to

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Deadstick ( 535032 )
      How about an adapter cable that would let you text in your metadata from your cellphone?

      rj

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Ben174 ( 853174 )
      ... and GPS.
  • It's an interesting concept for people who are going on vacation. But imagine all the noise it would generate. Imagine, I could note all the toilets I had to clean! (...and you'd know if I did a good job when you visted them on vacation.) As long as the filtering is good, it sounds like an interesting idea. Myself, I don't like to go out and do much unless I can see it's actually worth the time. Perhaps some of the pictures (and no, not of intoxicated women) might be influential as to where one might

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by LMacG ( 118321 )

      I could note all the toilets I had to clean!


      Dude, you know those signs that say "Clean Restrooms" aren't direct orders, right?
  • GPS Data + compass information embedded in photos worldwide

  • Before you get too excited... (Score:5, Informative)

    by djupedal ( 584558 ) on Sunday June 10, 2007 @07:28PM (#19461275)
    "Try finding that in a guidebook."

    The 'Lonely Planet' book series made all the difference when I first came to Asia...even inside China, 15 ~ years back. I'm sure metadata will be huge, someday. But it follows on the heals of other terrific resources that have already 'been there, done that' and will continue for quite some time I am sure.

    I learned how to get the local Chinese police to help move me to my next destination - If you were caught inside the frontier, they were ordered to return you to the last city you visited. The trick was to tell them your next city instead of the last one - they would load you up and happily take you on to your next destination. Courtesy Lonely Planet - try finding that kind of help w/Flcker :)

    • Re:Before you get too excited... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 10, 2007 @07:56PM (#19461429)
      Here are my personal observations from spending 1 month in China back in 1997.

      The thing I remember most from my trip to China is the bodycount. I've never seen so many corpses lying around on the streets anywhere as I did on an early morning busride from Qufu to Jinan. I saw the remains of over 30 (we stopped counting at 30.. there were more) fatal vehicle accidents which ranged from cars and trucks hitting each other, pedestrians, bicyclists, immovable objects, and a donkey in one case. It was explained to me that the drivers in that particular area (province?) feel they conserve gas by driving without their headlights on at night (which I observed). I also noted in this area there generally weren't street lights.

      A train ride from Qufu to Xi'an was also noteworthy in that our train apparently struck someone. The train came to a stop with the body right outside the train car behind mine. I watched in amazement as about 6 Chinese officials (I'm calling them officials because they appeared to be wearing uniforms) got off the train and stood around the body kicking/prodding it. They eventually (after about 5 minutes) dragged it onto the middle of the set of train tracks alongside ours, got back on our train and we continued on our (less-merry) way.

      A taxi ride to get to a train station in Tsingdao resulted in police action against our taxi driver. While enroute, our taxi driver was waved to the side of the road by what appeared to be a police or military officer. The officer-type walked over to our cab and started arguing with the taxi driver. The driver pointed back at us. The cop-type person reached up and pulled the taxi sign off our driver's roof and started walking away. Our driver got out and went walking after the officer, at which point the officer turned around, drew his firearm (some kind of short-stock ak47 looking machinegun thing) and pointed it at the driver. My friend and I exited the cab and went running for the train station which was in view down the street.

      I admit that most of these impressions I was left with were formed through a haze of not being remotely able to speak/parse/understand the Chinese language, but I'm certainly of the impression that actions speak louder than words. I have a slew of pictures and other impressions, but these are definitely the strongest. Its been 10 years since then and I remember the whole of the trip as if it were yesterday. While you would be hard-pressed to convince me to return, I am glad I went.

      • Re:Before you get too excited... (Score:4, Informative)

        by djupedal ( 584558 ) on Sunday June 10, 2007 @08:14PM (#19461503)
        "While you would be hard-pressed to convince me to return, I am glad I went."

        Reminds me of the one visit I paid to Compton, southern Calif, back in....1978? Except I wasn't the least bit glad I went.

        That person the train hit was most likely a suicide. Those uniforms were soldiers, assigned to ride the trains in case of trouble. Today, there are regular police, however, looking for baggage thieves, pickpockets, swindlers running cons, etc.

        Same as in Japan, except in Japan you are expected to not pull this kind of stunt either during rush hour, or on a busy line so as to cause the least trouble to the fewest commuters. They used to publish monthly listings of the best places to jump onto the tracks... I think in the last 5 years, I've seen less than 1/2 dozen bodies...mostly people from the country crossing busy streets or riding bicycles out in traffic.

        Those decade old photos should be up on Google/Picasso, as an example. China has changed in so many ways in just the last ten years...of course, many things have not, but to see the cities grow can be interesting, I think :)

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by NateTech ( 50881 )
          "Please respect others and don't commit suicide during rush hour, you're delaying the trains."

          That concept alone might be enough to drive some to suicide. Good lord.

          People get downright strange when you pack them in too closely. LA, NYC, Tokyo... all full of nutjobs with ideas like the above.

          I'm imagining the conversation that led to the above:

          "You know, if we ask folks not to commit suicide on the train tracks during rush hour that will save us a lot of headaches."

          "Hey, even better, let's publish locatio

      • Those decade old photos should be up on Google/Picasso, as an example. China has changed in so many ways in just the last ten years...of course, many things have not, but to see the cities grow can be interesting, I think :)

        Seconded. I would love to see these.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kklein ( 900361 )
        Heheh, it was the same in 1999, when I backpacked China for a month. But I've been back a few times, and it's really changing fast. The food is still incredible and cheap, but a lot of the crummy things are getting less and less crummy. Take another look!
  • I normally vacation on Hilton Head Island in SC. Been going there pretty much yearly since I was 9. Now that I'm married I have a timeshare on the island for the same week that I have been going my whole life.

    This year we attempted to trade the timeshare (which used to be cake with RCI) but found that our choices (we wanted to go to Montana) were limited and RCI was being difficult. Because we traded out we weren't able to get back to our usual location in Hilton Head so we settled on nearby Edisto Beach

  • ...or inform **and** bore (Score:4, Insightful)

    by VidEdit ( 703021 ) on Sunday June 10, 2007 @07:41PM (#19461357)
    ...being informative and being boring are not mutually exclusive. There is no reason vacation photos can't do **both**.
  • For a long time I have been having trouble finding photos and facts on the good backpacking spots in Afghanistan. Maybe this will help.
    • I'm sure it will in time but in the meantime I'd suggest you might be better off taking some time to visit a few mosques, any in Bradford, Birmingham or Leeds ought to do.

      They have a wide range of travel tips for Afghanistan and will probably be able to arrange local guides for you and a short orientation to educate you on dealing with the local hazards. You may find it best to be based in Pakistan and travel over in company with some of the, colourful, local caravans which regulary travel in and out of the
  • I have a Facebook account, and I'd say at least 3/4 of the pictures uploaded by people I know have each person in a picture tagged, and about half of all pictures have a Description tag filled out. It makes sense, though, seeing as how hundreds upon hundreds of pictures can accumulate. It makes searching later much more convenient.
  • Is it me or there are way many too many stories about Flickr recently (including the censorship)? Can I have my Google stories back please. Thanks.

  • Been there, done that (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fermion ( 181285 ) on Sunday June 10, 2007 @08:25PM (#19461549) Homepage Journal
    Any open system of that allows open submission of audience created data will, as soon as it becomes popular enough, be abused by commercial interests. Planning a trip to Cancun, most hits will be fly by night vacation offers. Planning a trip to the Philippines, most ads will soon be targeted to the exotic sex tourist. The signal to noise ratio, even with rated content, quickly becomes overwhelming.

    The only way that metadata can become useful is if there is little commercial interest and the normal urge for mere annoyance is purposefully squelched.

  • The biggest problem with Metadata is that nobody wants to take the time to enter the data. The programs are there. It can be done, but nobody wants to spend as much time managing the metadata as they do doing the things that the pictures are depicting. Maybe if you had a camera with built in GPS, you could know where every picture was taken. But then again, you'd probably want some of that info stripped before it was uploaded to flickr and others, because you don't want everyone knowing exactly where ev

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Riktov ( 632 )
      And because tagging is such a time-consuming process, Flickr lets people batch tag all uploaded images at once -- which just makes things WORSE. If I search for "F-15", 75% percent of the pictures don't even have an F-15 in them because they were batch uploaded by someone who applied the tag of every item depicted in any of the photos, resulting in every photo having the same 20 tags, 18 of which are incorrect for that photo.
      • Yeah, this is really annoying. People often call all their holiday photo something like "London" "Holiday" and the spend most of the holiday outside London so any searchs just turn up a load of irrelevant stuff.
    • That's why you have to make it incredibly easy, and offer rewards, and fun: http://www.grapheety.com [grapheety.com]/

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 0x0000 ( 140863 )

      The biggest problem with Metadata is that nobody wants to take the time to enter the data.

      ... that may be, but I think there is a more subtle problem that feeds this one: Data format standardization. The EXIF info from the camera is good, but there doesn't seem to be any user-definable data fields except "Comment" and that gets hugely abused - also, I suspect there are at least 2 different "JPEG Comment" mechanisms - If use the properties dialog from Windows Explorer, I see a different set of data att

  • Goatse Geomapped, Finally! (Score:5, Funny)

    by DavidD_CA ( 750156 ) on Sunday June 10, 2007 @09:05PM (#19461743) Homepage
    Finally I can geomap Goatse pictures to make for a more efficient search.

    Check it out [flickr.com].

    This technology is great!

    • mod parent funny (Score:2, Informative)

      by JeanBaptiste ( 537955 )
      its actually quite hilarious, check out the link - there's no actual goatse buried in there anywhere - people making goatse cookies, painting goatse references on things, bumper stickers, etc
      • I noticed that, too. And frankly, I'm glad. I'd much rather see random goatse-tagged photos than actual... well... you know. *shudder*
  • I would like to suggest that we be careful with this type of feature. The more information that we make available about ourselves on any network service or device means that much more data that people whom we don't want anything to do with can get at that data.

    I will use the old fashioned ways of photos and vacations, thank you.

    From the playgrounds of Winchester, I am . . .

    padlocked.swings

  • Okay, maybe I need new contact lenses or maybe I have had one too many Alaskan Ambers, but did ANYONE else read the headline as "Vatican Photos That Inform Instead of Bore" and clicked immediately to see what new mischief Pope Benny has been up to? Anyone?
  • Bored? Bored?!? If you don't like my vacation photos get off your ass and take your own damn vacation.

    Lazy kids...
  • I _think_ this is the building that the 'famous' neck face graffiti is on [google.com]. It's the one in on the right side of the road apparently just below the overhanging streetlight.

    Compare the concertina wire and steel on the right and the greenish facade on the building just in front of the graffiti in the flickr photo [flickr.com].

  • I wonder why no one mentioned this is a quote from the New York Times? I saw it yesterday syndicated in my local paper.

    I'm surprised they didn't even mention the other big players: http://www.grapheety.com [grapheety.com] , or http://www.plazes.com [plazes.com].

    It is going to be a whole new world once the world is casually tagged with stories, and pictures, etc. Where one can explore without even going outdoors. Personally I think Grapheety is the best at that...

  • "the infamous 'Neck Face' tag, spray-painted on a brick warehouse at Jay and Front Streets in Brooklyn. Try finding that in a guidebook."

    Okay, one, I had no idea that there was anything infamous about two words of block-type grafffiti on a warehouse. I thought that happened all the time, in every warehouse district.

    And two, anyone who's heard of this allegedly infamous graffiti tag doesn't need meta-semantic markup and GPS coordinates to find it. If you've heard of it, you know it's in DUMBO; so take the

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