Geocoding All Content

martin dodge writes "What happens when all content is automatically tagged with the geographical location of its production? We are all used to having a date stamp on documents, but I think adding a location stamp opens up lots of new possibilities. Two recent articles look at many of the interesting possible apps/services which are made possible when you ground cyberspace with location. 'Get Caught Mapping' from Guardian Online and 'The Revenge of Geography' by Tom (writer of The Victorian Internet) Standage in the Economist. I think one of the most exciting is for locating online conversations by geographic proximity. Taking Waldo Tobler's First Law of Geography ("Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things"), often nearby conversations are most relevant and interesting. See UpMyStreet's Conversations for an example."

Comments

GeoURL

[bergie]

The GeoURL service seems to have a pseudo-standard for this. To geo-code your content add the following META tags to it:

<meta name="ICBM" content="XX.XXXXX, XX.XXXXX">
<meta name="DC.title" content="THE NAME OF YOUR SITE">

The ICBM meta-tag there is where you put the coordinates. More info.

Another similar service seems to be GeoTags

/Bergie

Exif file format is ready for it

[Cousin Dupree]

The Exif file format, which contains header information for JPEG images is ready for location stamps. There are tags for longitude and lattitude. Exif is embedded in JPEG images and is in use by most digital cameras.

This means that a GPS-enabled digital camera could not only store when a picture was taken, but automatically record WHERE it was taken. This could be a great asset for travelers, surveyors, journalists, etc.