With the increased use of Internet capable mobile devices such as the Blackberry and Apple's iPhone, geotagging has seen a surge in popularity as well. With the ability to quickly add GPS information to media, smartphones make geotagging a simple task.
But just what is geotagging? It is marking a video, photo or other media with a location. This can not only help people find images and information based on a location, but it can also be used to create location-based news and media feeds by combining an application like Google Maps with geotagged blogs, news articles and Flickr photos.
Mapdango is an example of a web mashup built on geotagging.
Geotagging and Images
Images are one of the oldest types of media to use geotagging. Certain formats like the JPEG format allow for geographical information to be embedded within the image and then read by picture viewers, which allows the exact location of where a picture was taken to be saved with a photograph.
Smartphones with built-in cameras and GPS have made geotagging images a breeze.
Geotagging and HTML
A block of text of piece of HTML code can also be geotagged by using specific standards in communicating the exact location to be attached to the HTML. The format for geotagging HTML is as follows:
<div class="geo">GEO: <span class="latitude">37.386013</span>, <span class="longitude">-122.082932</span> </div>
Read more about Geotagging HTML
Geotagging and Blogging
Some blogging and microblogging sites such as Twitter also support geotagging. This is especially popular with blogging and social networking sites that cater to a mostly mobile audience.
By geotagging blog posts and updates on your social network, you can easily alert your friends to your location. You can also track yourself through your own lifefeed.
Twittervision is a great mashup that uses geotagging to create a new view of Twitter.
