Geotate wants to geotag the world

The highlight of an otherwise lackluster PMA 2008 came not from Nikon, Canon, or any of the other big name companies, but rather General Imaging: GE's new camera division announced that it will release one of the world's first point-and-shoots with embedded GPS. Well, to say that the E1050 has true GPS would not be totally accurate -- but the very features it lacks are what make it possible to incorporate geotagging capabilities in the first place. You see, this model only contains a GPS radio courtesy of New Zealand-based Rakon, but no baseband chip to process the data in order to create a "fix"; rather, an NXP Semiconductor spinoff called Geotate provides server-connected software that does the heavy-duty calculations once photos have been transferred over. This results in almost no hit to battery life or endless waits for a solid fix.

It works like this: every time the shutter is triggered, the camera's memory card briefly captures the raw data from the GPS radio, associating it with each photo. Then, once the pictures have been imported into Geotate's proprietary client, auxiliary location data is downloaded from a central server, which is then synthesized with the camera data using local resources to establish actual coordinates. What's more, the Geotate software hooks in to Wikipedia as well as the popular mapping and photo-sharing services, giving you real-world information about your shots while also allowing you to map them out and upload to Flickr, Picasa, and friends.

Geotate tells us that besides the E1010, we can also expect to see the platform incorporated into future cams designed by Taiwanese OEM Altek, with such a reference design pictured in the gallery below, along with one for a geotagging peripheral that snaps into a DSLR hotshoe. In the longer term, Geotate hopes to embed its low-cost solution (all that's needed is a small radio and some flash memory) in all sorts of products, from PCs to sneakers to soda bottles. And that's where the name of the company comes from: Geotate stands for "GEOgraphic noTATion," with the ultimate goal being the creation of an ecosystem in which we search not by "what," but by "where."

Gallery: Geotate wants to geotag the world

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[Aaron @ Jan 31st 2008 8:01PM]

It seems to me that the more simple method, as demonstrated at the Sony booth at CES, is a stand-alone GPS logger that is time-synced with your camera. Using their software, which isn't very complicated, the image files are updated back in the home or studio with the corresponding location for each time-stamp.

A simple solution to geotagging, and it works with *every* camera that is able to time-stamp images.

[Jesse S @ Jan 31st 2008 8:17PM]

I want this for an F6.

[William @ Jan 31st 2008 8:31PM]

Is there a recurring charge for the service?

[Kevin @ Jan 31st 2008 10:52PM]

That's cool that they use the same font as the engadget logo.

[John Barranco @ Feb 1st 2008 1:20AM]

I certainly see the point of it. It is something that I've always wanted to make my job easier. When I go out to do a site investigation I take a ton of photos. Then when I get back to the office, I have difficult telling where each photo was at on the job site, and what direction I was facing. If I am able to get GPS coordinates tagged to each photo, that would make the photos that much easier to differentiate and compare to the design drawings.

[Bill @ Feb 1st 2008 2:44PM]

I dont see the point in this as all?!

[Zoltan Gyenge @ Feb 4th 2008 2:54AM]

This is great because a conventional GPS needs way too much time to get a fix. I don't know if anyone would like to wait 1 minute for a fix each time one powers on the camera just to get a fix. Not speaking about the long waits for a fix after taking flight and the gps being completely messed up and looking for the wrong satellites for 5 minutes or more. This sollution by Geotate, if it really works, is perfect for this kind of applications where you don't need the position immediately. People who say they don't see the point of this probably didn't spend 1 minute to really think about it or have never used a GPS to see how much a fix takes and how much juice they draw from the battery.

[foolography @ Feb 29th 2008 6:35AM]

definitely a cool, and groundbreaking idea, but until it's available, check out the next best thing to built-in GPS:
a tiny bluetooth module that sits directly on the higher-end Nikon cameras, which can be used with pretty much any modern Bluetooth GPS:

http://www.foolography.com

theFool

[xtemujin @ Apr 7th 2008 11:06AM]

I'm looking forward to buy and test and evaluate the Geotate Hopi which mounts on a hotshoe.

I believe that you've to synchronise the time on the camera with the GPS time.

Will the Geotate software support geotagging Nikon NEF files or other RAW format ?

If it just support jpeg files, it'll be a big disadvantage.

Which month can we expect the Geotate Hopi to be launched ?