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Vacation Photos That Inform Instead of Bore

Posted by Zonk on 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."

32 of 129 comments (clear)

  1. Neck Face by magicchex · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

    --
    How many fulltime jobs can one man have?
    1. Re:Neck Face by OS24Ever · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --

      As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.

    2. Re:Neck Face by timeOday · · Score: 2, Insightful
      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 with names like IMG00427.JPG might not be such a problem after all.

    3. Re:Neck Face by Eivind · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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-content, meta-information and linking, all of which is incomplete and inconsistent. That fails to be the case.

  2. Re:Cool by Tribbin · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm not known for liking Microsoft, but check Photosynth:

    http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/129

    --
    If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
  3. Privacy by ushering05401 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Privacy by jollyreaper · · Score: 3, Funny

      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.
      --
      Kwisatz Haderach
      Sell the spice to CHOAM
      This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
  4. Camera with LCD keyboard by jshriverWVU · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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 :)

    1. Re:Camera with LCD keyboard by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 2, Informative

      "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 Disneyland recently but it was always a quick snap then I had to put it in my pocket and move on. Still, though, I thought that'd be great for shopping.

      --

      "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

    2. Re:Camera with LCD keyboard by Lumpy · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    3. Re:Camera with LCD keyboard by mobby_6kl · · Score: 2, Informative

      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 recognition on it with some kind of console tool, and store the result in the image EXIF comment field, separate text file, or database. I think I found my next perl project ;-)

      There are a few (unique to the method) problems with this, though. Most cameras, including the FZ-5, would be using a built-in microphone, which is probably facing the direction of the subject, not the person making the comment. It's also often very noisy, in urban environments this could be traffic or gunfights, even out in the country strong wind could interfere with the quality. Bad sound quality == poor recognition accuracy. And of course it might not be possible or appropriate to say the comment out loud, like "a slutty chick with huge boobs I met at Joe's party" when she's posing for the shot right in front of you.

      There are some general problems too, of course, like what exactly to comment on besides the subject. Anyway, some cameras already have GPS units built in, and others support external ones. IMO adding geographical data is the easiest thing to do technologically, and while it's not the complete solution, it helps a great deal.

    4. Re:Camera with LCD keyboard by Deadstick · · Score: 2, Interesting

      How about an adapter cable that would let you text in your metadata from your cellphone?

      rj

    5. Re:Camera with LCD keyboard by mobby_6kl · · Score: 2, Informative

      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. They're still somewhat smaller than most SLRs, and they don't suck. The shutter lag is around 0.009 or 0.07 seconds, 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 Leica lens is pretty good too, the end results aren't too bad compared to a 50mm prime lens on a 350D. The image noise at high ISOs still sucks compared to any DSLR of course, but there's simply no way to fit a large sensor in a compact camera.

      If the FZ50, or even the FZ8 is too large, there's still the TZ3 and whole bunch of even smaller cameras. As far as I can tell, they all have similar shutter lag, but they aren't directly compared to SLRs in terms of image quality, and I can't comment on them myself.

      No, I'm not in any way related to dpreview (or Amazon), but as I've mentioned in a post somewhere above, I do have an FZ-5 and I'm quite happy with it.

  5. Re:Cool by SubliminalVortex · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Did you catch the part about them 'embedding' the "Fake" ad? If you did, well, bully for you, if you didn't, well, I'm onto your game. :)

  6. Re:Glorifying Vandalism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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 a lot of people complained about a few parts they considered "obscene".

  7. Before you get too excited... by djupedal · · Score: 4, Informative

    "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 :)

    1. Re:Before you get too excited... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    2. Re:Before you get too excited... by djupedal · · Score: 3, Informative

      "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 :)

  8. Re:Glorifying Vandalism by Chibi+Merrow · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
    Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
  9. Re:Cool by suv4x4 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm not known for liking Microsoft, but check Photosynth:

    Don't worry, we won't eat you alive even if you liked Microsoft. It's a damn company.

  10. ...or inform **and** bore by VidEdit · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...being informative and being boring are not mutually exclusive. There is no reason vacation photos can't do **both**.

    --
  11. Re:Glorifying Vandalism by QuantumG · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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 with it. Then there's the guys who jump fences and paint on houses and shit. That's just juvenile.

    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.
  12. Facebook is a contributor by daddyrief · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

    --
    "Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies." -Thomas Jefferson
  13. Re:Cool by maxume · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I don't have the bandwidth to look at the video, but this program offers some different ways of browsing photos(as opposed to the ACDSee alikes):

    http://www.windsorinterfaces.com/photomesa-downloa d.shtml

    (Windows+.Net)

    --
    Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
  14. Been there, done that by fermion · · Score: 4, Interesting
    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.

    --
    "She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
  15. Goatse Geomapped, Finally! by DavidD_CA · · Score: 4, Funny

    Finally I can geomap Goatse pictures to make for a more efficient search.

    Check it out.

    This technology is great!

    --
    -David
  16. Re:Glorifying Vandalism by Planesdragon · · Score: 2, Insightful

    There are some 6 million New Yorkers. Once you get beyond things like "are human" and "speak English", most don't mean crap.

  17. Re:Goatse! by utopianfiat · · Score: 2, Funny

    I mean, doesn't everyone? No? Just me?
    Damn, do I feel pathetic.

    --
    +5, Truth
  18. mod parent funny by JeanBaptiste · · Score: 2, Informative

    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

  19. Re:tagging by pimpimpim · · Score: 2, Insightful
    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 retrieving the article, but at least they would resemble a sort of mini summary and poll. For example, if I would see the tags: 'evil, notevil' on an article I would immediately see that it was a point of dicussion, and therefore likely an interesting read.

    I say, please slashdot, make up your mind and think of a better thing you want us to do with your tags than the current useless goal. Also, some trust in your userbase would be nice, you trust us when it comes to submitting the content, and commenting on the content, why not when tagging the content?

    --
    molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
  20. Re:Cool by tiluki · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The "LiveLabs Preview" - i.e. actual application to try out - is actually here: http://labs.live.com/photosynth/

    Strangely enough, works only in a Windows browser...

    Of course based on actual research into "Photo-tourism" by Noah Snavely et al. (note his supervisor is Richard Szeliski, explaining the M$ connection:-)

    Got to hand it to them, this only backs up what some people have said for a while about taking Computer Vision research and throwing a proper development teams at it (c.f. Boujou). Result: one cool product.

  21. Re:Cool - but Google Street is JUST the streets by Basho · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I agree with people that have complained/worried that ideas like this will just be taken over with advertising, or worse yet, 38 pictures of the same 2 people standing at a street corner with different looks on their faces.

    I've been geotagging Photoblogger posts for a while now (starting with my own...) and have found the results really interesting after a while. A popular area here in Toronto is the Don Valley Brickworks - http://wholemap.com/map/area.php?area=TorontoBrick works shows interesting photos of the area, videos, links to Project Gutenberg books, and so on.

    And by adding in the time element you can see the construction of the new addition to our museum, not in boring drive-by photos from the top of a Beetle, but though images like http://wholemap.com/map/area.php?area=TorontoROM&p in=SART-264 to http://wholemap.com/map/area.php?area=TorontoROM&p in=DDOI-1