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Microsoft Graphics Software

Inside Microsoft's New Digital Photo Project 239

Posted by michael from the wear-good-socks dept.
robyn217 writes "While Microsoft Research plays 'Big Brother' to a young hiker's trip across North America, it breaks new ground in digital photography by combining metadata, like location via GPS, with the image. Its online presence looks impressive as it displays digital photo albums on a map of the world, but it's slow and unwieldy for the most part and may not be better than a standard travelogue site. This week, I took a closer look at the project currently named the World-Wide Media eXchange (WWMX)."
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Inside Microsoft's New Digital Photo Project More

Inside Microsoft's New Digital Photo Project

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  • Where do you want to go today? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Just point at the picture you'd like to go to, and Microsoft will tell you exactly where it is.

    • Re:Where do you want to go today? (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I wouldn't mind telling Microsoft where to go.
    • >>Just point at the picture you'd like to go to, and Microsoft will tell you exactly where it is.
      I think somebody on the implementation team needs to go back to the drawing board. Or out to the woodshed...

      From the web page: "our small server is unable to keep up with requests, and access to the WWMX itself maybe even slower than it usually is." [emphasis mine] Hmmm. Not exactly what I'd call a ringing endorsement of their server technology.

      A little examination of the header info tells us what we

  • 'plays Big Brother'? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 06, 2004 @04:40PM (#8205784)
    They are the freaking sponsor! You make it sound like some grand conspiracy.

    • Backgrounder (Score:5, Interesting)

      by IPFreely ( 47576 ) <mark@mwiley.org> on Friday February 06, 2004 @05:10PM (#8206228) Homepage Journal
      Bill Gates has a private project (Corbis [corbis.com], not affiliated with MS) growing to amass a large collection of photographs. It already does a good business of finding and licensing photos for almost any use. They could be trying to get more for the collection, or to join up in an IP pipeline to benefit both companies.
    • I think it was more in reference to the ever-watchful nature of the television show. Hence the quotes.
    • Wrong!!

      Think Big Brother, the television show!

      Atleast, that's what I thought of immediately, and that's how it was intended.
    • Word. I don't see how this is any worse than, i dunno, OWNING a cell phone. In fact, I trust Microsoft more than I trust Verizon. Microsoft might have locked me indefinitely into an upgrade path, but they did it through enticing features and a massive application pool, not a mandatory contract. And Microsoft isn't allowed to charge me $175 to switch providers...

  • I for one, am glad ms is getting into this (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DR SoB ( 749180 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @04:41PM (#8205803) Journal
    I'm glad microsoft is getting into this kind of thing. National Geographic has been doing a dismal job over the past few months, and there really are not enough players in the game. It's funny, in my experience most geeks really do like the great outdoors, so it seems a proper marriage to me!

    • You mean you.... erm.... welcome our new photo/GPS overlords?

    • Re:I for one, am glad ms is getting into this (Score:5, Informative)

      by infochuck ( 468115 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @04:57PM (#8206058)
      National Geographic has been doing a dismal job over the past few months, and there really are not enough players in the game. It's funny, in my experience most geeks really do like the great outdoors, so it seems a proper marriage to me!

      I'm one of those outdoor geeks (backpacking, kayaking), and I have to disagree with your assesment of National Geographic's performace. I'm not certain exactly to what you are referring, but if it's basic mapping software, I *love* their NatGeo Topo State series. The maps are the latest USGS topoquads (many other campanies' prducts, like Delorme, use maps that are many years old and lacking in many newer trails), and are beautifully reproduced. GPS support has been wonderful, and I can do exactly what the above blurb was talking about - take photos, record their positions in my GPS, and, when I get back home, upload my route, along with waypoints indicating, among other things, where I took what photos. The photos then have to be manually associated with each waypoint, but it works so well, I'm not about to start complaining.
      • Dude, I'll complain for you...

        Are you trying to suggest that manually associating a waypoint with an image is a good solution? The first time, yeah. For 10 images, maybe. For 100 images, no way. For 1000 images, you've got to be kidding me. Even in smaller daily batches, it would get tedious. And computers excel at tedious jobs.

        Kodak had a camera a while back that ran Java. You could plug a GPS into its serial port and it would automatically stamp the images. That was a pretty cool solution, but it
    • It's funny, in my experience most geeks really do like the great outdoors

      Were not talking about the Outdoor simulation on 3DMark here. -Ba da bum.

    • Microsoft is not getting into it.

      It is very important to remember that Microsoft (maker of Windows(tm) operating system) is a very different beast from Microsoft Research. MSR is a true research organization, and assuming that work done there will in any way translate into Microssoft products is a long-shot at best. Probably the most likely outcome of this kind of work is that some of the technology will be fed back into parts of various MS products.

  • Thought this was call TIFF (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lostpuppy ( 121909 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @04:43PM (#8205846)
    They have been using embeded data in TIFFs for years in nav. programs that overlayed a map image with altitude and lat/long.

    • If you're talking about GeoTIFF, it's not the same thing. GeoTIFF adds real georeferencing metadata to raster data. This just adds coordinates to a photo. I think the point of this is to then present the photos in a geographical context. They hint that it'll be a feature of Longhorn's media-management capabilities.

      Cute idea. Still, it's not all that revolutionary. If Apple added a geo-coordinate metadata field and simple mapping capability to iPhoto, they could probably beat MS to the punch well before Lo

  • I bet... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 06, 2004 @04:44PM (#8205860)
    ...if a Linux-based solution was doing exactly the same thing terminology like 'big brother' would be nowhere to be found. I find your write-up to be double plus biased.

    • Re:I bet... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sakshale ( 598643 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @04:58PM (#8206075) Homepage Journal
      I agree 100%

      I am not a fan of MicroSoft, but I am a fan of being truthful. The phrasing used in the announcement would have been flagged -1 TROLL or -1 FLAMEBAIT if I was moderating.

      MicroSoft's sponsoring of something like this is not something that we should condemn or flame. Sounds like it is the people at /. who operate the 'Ministry of Truth'.
      • They're too busy reporting that Microsoft is "violating human rights in China" because bad people use Windows. Disregard Red Flag Linux for now.
      • Yeah, to a point I can see what you mean. But evaluate it in light of the things that various M$ folk over the years have said to the press. Think about all the various "big Brotherish" projects that M$ has supported over the years.

        I don't think it is necessarily unfair to apply that label to M$, after all their actions make a pretty good case for hanging it on them.

        I agree with you in that I fail to see how the phrase is applicable to this particular project of M$'s, but they got a lot of bad histo

        • Yep, it's like a known child molester trying to get involved in a volunteer project with schoolkids, and someone making a comment that this is dangerous. Sorry, but when you've made a very bad reputation for yourself, you have to live with it, and people have every right to judge you by your past actions, and also to treat you differently because of them.

    • Re:I bet... (Score:2, Informative)

      by tommy_traceroute ( 701929 )
      Take a deep breath and relax - what makes you assume that the "Big Brother" is an Orwellian reference, vs. a reference to the idiotic reality-tv show of the same name (thus the capitalization, perhaps)? RTFA and decide for yourself if this doesn't ring true.
    • Yes, but against that unjustified negative bias, you have to put the unjustified positive bias, namely that this is something "ground breaking". Altogether, this is a non-story about some nerd at Microsoft doing what other nerds elsewhere have done before. It's neither particularly amazing nor particularly scary.
    • keep in mind that Microsoft doesn't have a stellar track record for information privacy.
      Hence the big brother comment remark.

  • Cobine with TerraServer (Score:4, Interesting)

    by plilja ( 91030 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @04:44PM (#8205861)
    Once there is a large enough dataset of pictures (and that really is the key to making more then a travelog), I like the idea of combining something like this with a satalite imaging service so you can feel like you are really zooming in.

    To me it has the potential to help provide context to the places that you here about on the news or that students are assigned to research. Plus, it's just plain neat!

    • Once there is a large enough dataset of pictures (and that really is the key to making more then a travelog), I like the idea of combining something like this with a satalite imaging service so you can feel like you are really zooming in.

      USGS DOQs (the kind used on Terraserver & the probably best a civilian will get) are 1m resolution aerial photos. You're not really going to be able to "zoom in" on photos taken from the ground. There probably are satellites with better resolution but you're not lik

  • Correlating Images and GPS data. (Score:5, Informative)

    by bogamo ( 96489 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @04:44PM (#8205866)
    I currently run a website, TrailRegistry [trailregistry.com] that does exactly this. Actually it does a whole lot more. The general tilt of my site is hiking related, so the pictures are generally of views, shelters, mountains, etc... What I think is more important is sharing of trip data collected by GPS. So for instance, if you hiked an unmarked trail in your area, you could upload the GPS track log to TrailRegistry, and TrailRegistry will create a Topo map (On the fly) for other users to use.

    Please check it out, You might find it usefull. Also,I allways love feedback on what I could do better..
    • You forgot your close bracket:

      [/shameless-plug]

    • It appears that you just /.ed yourself.

    • GPS data in EXIF image tags (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Speare ( 84249 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @05:01PM (#8206124) Homepage Journal

      There is at least one professional camera which can embed GPS coordinates in the image data itself, in the form of an additional line in the EXIF tag. It has limitations when you're indoors, I would imagine, but great for most hiking or driving conditions.

      This would be immensely popular for real estate agents who need to correlate pictures to addresses all the time.

      • What is shown in the article is not very difficult at all. As long as you have location attached to the image *somehow*, just build an indexed database of localities, and link it to some form of web mapping tool (such as Mapserver, http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu)

        The tricky bits will be: Building something that can handle large volumes of image data (places like Deviant Art seem to handle it OK, but it'd cost), and; (IMHO, the useful bit), some way of deciding which one of a million pictures of the Grand Cany

    • Re:Correlating Images and GPS data. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mikeboone ( 163222 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @05:19PM (#8206341) Homepage Journal
      It would be nice to see your maps plotted on Digital Raster Graphic (DRG) maps. Though you'd probably need more horsepower to serve them up. And despite being public domain U.S. government data, they are pretty difficult to get for free. :(

      I have found free DRG data and plotted GPS routes on them for trip reports on my website. I haven't found any tools for doing this that will let me make up these maps and publish the result with no strings attached, so I've settled for overlaying my GPS track onto the map with Photoshop.

      http://boonedocks.net/travel/ [boonedocks.net]

      If anyone knows of a free/cheap tool where I can feed it my GPS track data and a public-domain DRG TIFF file, and plot the result, let me know.

      Storing GPS data in each photo seems like overkill to me. If the subject is distant, like a mountain, the lat/lon won't really convey what you want. And maybe I don't want someone to know the GPS coordinates of my house if I take a picture of my dog on the couch. :)
      • A good portion of the data on the site comes from DLG (Digital Line Graphs) from the USGS and National Park Service.
      • Storing GPS data in each photo seems like overkill to me. If the subject is distant, like a mountain, the lat/lon won't really convey what you want.

        Or add in a simple compass to the camera to record the approximate direction that you were facing when you took the picture. +/- 10 degree accuracy would be plenty.

        Actually I like the idea that a photo would be automatically tagged with GPS data along with the date/time/direction facing. I envision a news / historical service where the public can submit i
    • A while back a buddy and I were talking about taking this to the extreme. If you could have the GPS coordinates, the focal length, distance to subject, time, the direction the camera was facing, pitch and roll, you could actually throw together different images from multiple sources into a weird sort of virtual tour of an area over time and do a walkthrough (not smoothly, but well enough).

      Now that would be spiffy. Useless, but spiffy.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @04:44PM (#8205868)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I'm not sure about everyone else, but I interpreted it as "Big Brother the TV show" where the contestants are watched for the benefit of the viewers. This is Slashdot though, so I can see why everyone is freaking at the term. :P

  • "Server too busy" (Score:5, Funny)

    by Dracolytch ( 714699 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @04:44PM (#8205871) Homepage
    Great, lets link to a website that has nothing but photos and thumbnails! Ooh wait, better yet! Let's find one that organizes them dynamically with non-trivial algorithms!!

    Are we going for a new slashdotting record or something?

    ~D

  • They forgot the'.' (Score:5, Funny)

    by mynameis (mother ... ( 745416 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @04:45PM (#8205895)
    But still!

    While trying to view the microsoft link above I got the following error message:

    Server Error in '/' Application.

    Still amazingly honest for Microsoft!/p

  • WWMX (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mobby_6kl ( 668092 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @04:47PM (#8205917)
    Of course they couldn't call it WWME - World-Wide Media Exchange

  • I know it's in my sig... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Space cowboy ( 13680 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @04:47PM (#8205925) Journal
    ... but I just can't resist plugging hostip.info which attempts to geolocate IP addresses to a latitude / longitude map (and give a nice zoom-in if you're located or (if you're unknown) once you have put in your details...

    Simon.
    • ... but I just can't resist plugging hostip.info which attempts to geolocate IP addresses to a latitude / longitude map (and give a nice zoom-in if you're located or (if you're unknown) once you have put in your details...

      Yeah right, exactly what we need: A service that can map your IP to a physical/geological address. And you guys cry about spam, RFID tags, [insert your least favorite type of invasion of privacy here] .
  • because it's written in .NET (probably C#). Oh yeah, and at Slashdot, we don't like either .NET or Microsoft.

    Even when they do "impressive" stuff.
  • Is it that easy to /. a M$ .NET server?

  • That was my idea! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by smclean ( 521851 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @04:49PM (#8205955) Homepage
    Weird, I was just writing up plans the other day for php software which would be able to deal with relating images to GPS coordinates and compass headings, and make a nice interface. They stole my idea!

    I have a lot of good ideas for the software, and have already written out a lot of db schema and logic, but I am having a hard time finding high resolution maps which I may use legally, and this was discouraging. Most of the big satellite image companies want an arm and a leg for the right to display their images on your site. Anyone know of a place where I can get at least semi-high resolution satellite maps, like 5m or better, that I'll have the rights to display on my website?

    I assume that I would release the software under the GPL without any maps included, but its no fun writing software which nobody can really use unless they purchase satellite imagery!

    • Re:That was my idea! (Score:2, Interesting)

      by smclean ( 521851 )
      Just to expand on my idea, why not, I was going to first make a map manager that could take any map image, and let the user define the upper and lower / left and right latitude / longitude of the map. Then the user could import and tag all their images with GPS data, via either manual entry of latitude and longitude per-image, maybe some kinda EXIF data (are there cameras that do this), or let them just point-and-click on a defined map and calculate the lat/lon that way. Images could also be assigned a '
    • See if you can get a system to include even more information such as the direction the camera was pointing, lens size and zoom settings, etc. Then combine the whole thing together so that as more and more images come in, you can do matrix-esque bullet-time renderings of scenery, buildings and more.

      And you could build in error-correcting routines so that once you have multiple image sources for a particular location, it'll learn to throw away non-static elements such as vehicles and people. Imagine being

    • Here's "your" idea " http://www.geospatialexperts.com/ [geospatialexperts.com]

  • Actually not a bad idea (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dark Paladin ( 116525 ) * <jhummel.johnhummel@net> on Friday February 06, 2004 @04:51PM (#8205979) Homepage
    A few years ago an old Jeep buddy of mine mentioned an idea for a web site like this - people could drive around Utah, take pictures, and record the GPS coordinates of where the picture was taken so that others could find the same place for camping/etc.

    This just seems to do something of what iPhoto does - attaches some meta-data (in this case, GPS coordinates, time&date, etc) to the file.

    I'd say this could be pretty cool, though of course I'd like to see an open standard used and the ability to turn it off. I don't think I mind all cell phones by 2005 having GPS (the ability to save lives could be huge for 9-1-1 services), but I want the capacity to shut the damn thing off so Psycho Boy Jones can't jump me because he didn't like my recipe for spicy sweet mashed potatos.

    Side note for those worried about privacy: there was a story I was reading about a service for cell phones in Japan. Suppose your spouse calls and wants a picture of where you are, and instead of working late at the office (like you said you were), you were out at the bar with your friends. This service will forward a picture of your office to them instead of your current location.

    With GPS being mandatory in cell phones by 2005 (at least according to the article), you wonder how other people will tap into it? Is this a 9-1-1 services only thing, or is this "add to my GPS" list so people in other phones have your coordinates at all time? (Something that might be a new level of parental control when your teenager goes out with friends for the night....)
  • for capturing someone's cross country adventure and turning it into a slow loading web page adventure.

  • can I get MS to pay for my fantasy trip? (Score:3, Funny)

    by mpost4 ( 115369 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @04:53PM (#8206013) Homepage Journal
    I wonder how can we get MS to pay for other fantasy trips, I would love to get a boat and live on the sea and go diving every day. I would let them take all the pics they want, hell I would even let them test out the new MS scuba computer with me(as long as I get analog backups)
  • Is it just me, or did we just slashdot Microsoft?
    So much for stable serving abilities.

  • Nice. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Niacin ( 700561 )
    Maybe someday this could be put to use on something like mapquest. Do a search, pop up with a picture of your location, this sure as hell beats any map, when the user can SEE where they are going.

    I cant remember how many times i have been stuck guessing which building i have to walk into.

  • Locating places... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thewiz ( 24994 ) * on Friday February 06, 2004 @04:54PM (#8206028)
    Over the years I've seen many pictures of places I'd like to visit (as I'm sure the rest of you have as well). IMHO, including GPS and other location metadata in a picture is a great idea! Now we'll know exactly where that beautiful water fall we want to visit is rather than just knowing that it's somewhere in Ecuador.

    The downside of this is that every tourist with a GPS can find places that are virtually unspoiled by man and end up spoiling them.
    • The limitation of these sort of things is usually how hard it is to get to the place. If it's easy to get to, then everyone already knows about it. I don't think knowing the exact location is going to affect things all that much.
  • Combining GPS info with images is very cool, but NOT new. A quick google finds:


    information on how it's already being done [kennethhunt.com].

  • Interesting how so many people know it's no good (Score:5, Informative)

    by toopc ( 32927 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @04:58PM (#8206067)

    Yet the site isn't actually working. Maybe it does suck, maybe it's nothing new, but since it's not actually accessible at the moment, isn't it kind of hard to tell?

    It's a Microsoft Research site and obviously they weren't expecting it to be get much traffic. If you doubt Microsoft can set up a site that can handle high volume, everybody click this now:

    Microsoft.com [microsoft.com]

  • GPS in cameras please (Score:5, Interesting)

    by metamatic ( 202216 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @05:11PM (#8206241) Homepage Journal
    I can't wait until GPS technology is small enough and cheap enough to put inside the camera. It'd be great for looking at holiday photos...

    "Where the hell was that?"

    "Lemme check the map... Oh, that was St Jude's Cathedral."
    • Good news!

      It's already there and been available for years. Well, in Japan anyway.

      I wrote an open source EXIF metadata library for Delphi. Sometime in summer 2001, I had someone from Japan write and inquire about adding the GPS EXIF tags. I did so and tested it with some sample photos that were sent along. The interesting thing is that evidentally software shipped with the camera that plotted your path on a map and put links to each photo that you took. Of additional interest is that the GPS tags inc
    • Putting the GPS inside the camera may be neither necessary nor desirable right now. You are probably better off getting a Bluetooth GPS and putting Bluetooth into the camera. That way, you can keep the GPS in your backpack, give it its own big battery, and you can share it with your PDA and mapping software as well. Of course, eventually, GPS becomes small enough that it really doesn't matter.

      Note that some cameras already have "built-in GPS", or rather, they have a PCMCIA slot plus the software to driv

  • t breaks new ground in digital photography by combining metadata, like location via GPS, with the image

    Oh, that's right. I forgot Microsoft invented metadata. Giggle.

    (Am I the only one who heard about this being done by other companies years ago? I distinctly remember finding stuff about something similiar when looking for a Palm GPS module.)

  • We won't be able to publish our own photos online because it will infringe on some patent.

  • Article Text (Score:3, Funny)

    by sirReal.83. ( 671912 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @05:25PM (#8206411) Homepage
    Server Error in '/' Application.

    ***** Server Too Busy *****
    Description:An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

    Exception Details:System.Web.HttpException: Server Too Busy

    Source Error:

    An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below.

    Stack Trace:

    [HttpException (0x80004005): Server Too Busy] System.Web.HttpRuntime.RejectRequestInternal(HttpW orkerRequest wr) +147

    Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:1.1.4322.573; ASP.NET
    Version:1.1.4322.573

  • Do it Your Self Map Server (Score:4, Informative)

    by SufferingSimian ( 747942 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @05:29PM (#8206459)
    Screw M$. If you have a GPS and a digital camera, you can make your own site using GPS Photo Link.gpsphotolink [geospatialexperts.com] I've used it on numerous ocassions and it works like a charm. It uses the time stamp on your digital photos to relate to the nearest waypoint or position in your GPS tracklog to generate GIS data for your photo points. It then creates HTML that links your photos to map graphics of your location.
    Check out the sample sites at SAMPLES [geospatialexperts.com]

  • ka-boom (Score:2, Funny)

    by gregoryb ( 306233 )
    but it's slow and unwieldy for the most part

    if it wasn't before, it sure as heck is now!! yah slashdot!

  • It seems a good idea. But it would be really interesting if you could extend it to film and video production. One topic that interests me is the concept of automatically identifying the location of individual frames or scenes in adverts and movies. Some locations are fairly easy (downtown LA, Eiffel Tower, Tower of London), but sometimes things are a bit harder eg. looking for a streetname, telephone number on a vehicle).

    Many of the old series, have helicopter fly overs in downtown cores. I always wonder
  • I was just at a microsoft presentation at my university this week, and the guy was cool enough to demo the lastest build of longhorn. one of the things he showed off was the photo viewer/editor that had facial recognition. it could scan a picture, find peoples faces, let you click and name them, then tell the app to find all other pictures with that person in them. i have been a "mac zealot" for years, and even i must say that it was pretty cool. the guy made a good point that "shouldnt we all be expecting

  • EXIF? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by delus10n0 ( 524126 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @06:50PM (#8207498)
    Doesn't the EXIF specification already allow for information such as GPS location to be saved in the tag?

    http://www.exif.org/

    There also appears to be a propposal for LocationIFD, to further enhance/add to this functionality.
  • I wonder how long till this is patented: Patent for associating geographic data with images.

    Boy, wouldnt that blow. All of a sudden this interesting field being monopolized by microsoft. While it is an interesting concept, i cant see myself using it if it was a patented process... unless i hacked together a solution myself. It wouldnt be that hard with the textual comments in the JPEG headers.

  • Yeah Right (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ianr44 ( 562580 )
    As a young (19,) long distance hiker (Hiked the entire Appalachian Trail last year) I'm going to be pretty suprised if he can stick anywhere near that schedule. He's planning on going from Pinkham notch to Caratunk in 6 days, which is ~167 miles. That area is on par with the hardest sections of the trail, most thruhikers would be very impressed at averaging 20miles/day through there, yet he's intending to average 28!? In October no less, when there's could easily be a fair amount of snow on the ground.

  • Prior Art: FITS (Score:3, Informative)

    by Bloody Peasant ( 12708 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @09:44PM (#8208882) Homepage

    breaks new ground in digital photography by combining metadata, like location via GPS, with the image.

    Wait a minute. "Breaking new ground by... combining metadata with an image"????

    Sigh. Astronomers have been doing this since at least 1981 with the FITS Format [nrao.edu]. See over here [nasa.gov] for the full story on this venerable and still very much in production format.

    I sure hope M$ doesn't try something silly like a patent on this; it seems to me that FITS and the other formats used by the Medical and Geophysical Sciences would provide a wealth of prior art...

  • My GTWeb [spinellis.gr] system demonstrates [spinellis.gr] how trip diaries can be created and presented by exploiting the synergies of integrating a GPS, a digital camera, and publicly accessible databases. A GTWeb site consists of a trip overview, timelines, maps, and annotated photographs. The site is created by processesing a user's GPS track log and digital camera pictures, linking them with a gazetteer database, topography, and coastline data. The (research prototype quality) software I developed can be freely downloaded (GPLed Pe
  • Check out The Degree Confluence Project [confluence.org] for a more independent and manual approach. It's surprising how widely this project has covered already.

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