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DXG and Geotate team on geotagging video camera
We're still waiting for geotagging to go mainstream on consumer-level still cams, but Geotate isn't waiting around in its quest for location-aware domination -- it's teamed up with DXG to develop the first geotagging video camera we've seen. The camera itself isn't anything special -- it's just another average DXG HD cam, based on the DVH586 -- but the geotagging is powered by Geotate's Yuma software, which does most of the heavy lifting on the server at import, so we'd expect it to be pretty robust. No word on pricing or availability, but we're assuming it'll fall in line with the rest of DXG's lineup on the cheaper side.
Altek reveals GPS-enabled 8MP point-and-shoot
Picking up a camera with built-in WiFi not good enough for you? How's about a point-and-shoot with integrated GPS? DigiTimes has it that Altek, a Taiwanese ODM / OEM maker of digicams, has just unveiled a camera with an 8-megapixel sensor, 3-inch touchscreen and GPS. The latter will enable users to "automatically record the longitude and latitude of where a picture is taken," giving the geotagging crowd one gigantic reason to take notice. Reportedly, the firm is already negotiating orders with potential clients in Europe and the US, and shipments could start heading out as early as this quarter.
Hands-on with General Imaging's E-1050
Another colorful point-and-shoot, you say? Yes, but with a difference: General Imaging's E-1050 uses Geotate's clever approach to geotagging your photos. Add that to a 10-megapixel sensor, 5x zoom, electronic image stabilization and face detection and red eye removal that's in vogue this year, and you've got an interesting little package. Unfortunately, the unit was tethered by its HDMI port to a TV, so we couldn't play around with the unit and give away our location, so we'll have to wait and see if geotagging is enough of a checkmark to differentiate this little digicam. %Gallery-15064%
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-15065%
