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Geotagging finally works automatically with Nokia

20-DEC-2007

I just snapped this photo and e-mailed it to Flickr along with the text you are now reading straight from the phone. The GPS coordinates for the photo where included automatically and stored in the EXIF header of the image before it left the phone.

Has Nokia finally got this right, have they finally made two of their applications (camera and gps) talk to each other? Unfortunately no. The solution is an application from a third party: Locr (www.locr.com).

The Locr application has been around for Nokia phones for some time and if you have tried it previously, you have probably been disappointed. Besides using its own camera application that did not work correctly with newer Nokia models, their software only included the coordinates in your photo if you uploaded the photo to the Locr web site - not if you uploaded it to any other site such as Flickr or simply moved it to your own computer.

The new version of Locr simply runs in the background. When you snap a photo using Nokia's own built in camera application, Locr silently starts the GPS in your phone and automatically includes the GPS coordinates inside each image in the EXIF header - the normal, standard way of doing it. This way, the coordinates are safely stored with each image if you move the image to your computer and services such as Flickr can automatically make use of the coordinates and place the image on a map if you e-mail or upload a photo to their site.