Slashgeo

Ed Parsons was first to tells us about Geophoto, a geocoding photo software allowing geolocated photo browsing and sharing. From the site: "Using Geophoto, you can also fly through the pictures taken by a vast community of people around the globe, who share them through Photocasts or through Flickr: the "geotagged" photos that contain location information will automatically appear on the Earth." See the very numerous related stories on this story.

Google's Ed Parsons shares comments on the iPhone and its impact on location-based services. From the entry: "So it’s interesting that one of the key features demonstrated is the Maps application, powered by Google, and its a great demo of what makes geographic information so valuable. [...] The user interface of course is great making full use of the gesture support, the application appears fully integrated with the rest of the phones applications, and most important of all for an LBS application, even though the phone is not location aware, the information presented is actionable - the vital ingredient in any LBS application."

With the iPhone launch tomorrow, there's plenty of generic stories on the net. GeoThought shortly discuss Google Maps on the iPhone, and All Points Blog has a critical evaluation of the iPhone foreseen capabilities. From GeoThought: "They say "one of the most useful tools available on the Internet today is maps (sic), and Google Maps on the iPhone is amazing". It does have a number of flashy user interface features that aren't available on other versions of Google Maps." From APB: "The only thing I can see that is somewhat innovative is the integration the iPhone has with its other features. That is, when you select a particular POI, let's say a restaurant, and you touch the pin location on the map display, the user is able to see and then dial the phone number for that establishment." See also this previous entry by Ed Parsons and more below.

Slashgeo was on hiatus when the iPhone came out. Several geoblogs discuss the mapping capabilities of this overly hyped gadget. Here's some of them. Let's start with a press release on the Nokia N95 and the iPhone raising the bar for mobile multimedia. Ogle Earth offers a link to use a GPS with your iPhone. And a reminder that it supports GeoRSS. A wrap-up from The Map Room. And really worthed are the posts by Peter Batty on Geothough about his experiences with the iPhone and its mapping capabilities. See also previous stories.

The location capabilities for the iPhone has been discussed quite a few times here, see related stories below, but also this discussion on whether the iPhone needs GPS capabilities or not. Now Mapperz informs us a third-party GPS add-on for the iPhone and iPod Touch will start shipping in February at the price of 89$US. Great news: the software used is open source, bad news: it requires your iPhone/iPod Touch to be 'jailbroken' (maybe this will change with the upcoming SDK?). The description: "The iphone locoGPS module allows jail broken iphones to finally have GPS functionality. This module is in development and will be shipping in February. All software is open source and more applications are being written every day. The locoGPS module gives you the ability to explore all the benefits of GPS from a device that is small enough to put on a keychain." There's also Google's My Location new feature which works on the iPhone now.

Here's a few geonews items mainly related to cellphones and location-based services. Spatial Sustain informs us of the new "send to GPS" feature linking Google Maps and TomTom devices. Second, MacRumors discuss an Engaget story about TomTom (possibly, it's a rumor!) developing a GPS module for Apple's iPhone. Meanwhile, APB links to a NYT article wondering if Nokia can make serious inroads in the American market of cellphones and location-based services, and finally, APB runs a short entry on TeleNav and Navizon offering free small location-based services applications. Several related previous stories copied below.

A friend wrote to inform me that within the new MacOS X Leopard (10.5) to be available in 9 days, there seems to be some geospatial awareness at the operating system level, well, more precisely GPS metadata support directly in Preview, the default small application that open any PDF and image file: "GPS Metadata Support: Get real information from your photos. If your image has embedded GPS metadata, Preview will show you exactly where that perfect photo was taken. Open the Image inspector and select GPS. Preview pinpoints the location where you took the photo on a world map. From there you can even open the GPS location in Google Maps." Not exactly groundbreaking, but still nice to see such integration. See also related stories below.

AnyGeo reports about Navizon trying to use the iPhone as a gps device. From their summary, "An iPhone GPS hack? Well, if you check out gizmondo it appears that way! This blog thread discusses how the free Navizon GPS app was installed on the iPhone and enables geopositioning and navigation on the iPhone - check it out and let me know if it works for you! See http://www.navizon.com/FullFeatures.htm"

Mapperz provide two entries, one on the release of Ovi Nokia Maps and the second on the Nokia N95 free mobile map software. From the first entry: "Also under the Ovi umbrella is Nokia Maps, a navigation service that offers maps, city guides and more directly to compatible mobile devices. Nokia aims to bring more Internet based services to Ovi in the coming months." See also related stories below.

Garmin has released a developer preview version of the Communicator Plugin for Mac Safari and Firefox users. The plugin supports such things as autodetection of devices connected to the computer; ability to read and write tracks, routes and waypoints; and geocoding of addresses to save to a device as waypoint data among other things.

Websites using an older version of the API will need to be updated before Mac users can utilize the plugin, but with it being a developer release, expect this to come later on sites using the current version of the API.

Here's a few recent Apple related geonews. First is the capacity for Mac owners to run Microsoft Virtual Earth 3D using the new VMWare Fusion: "Microsoft Virtual Earth 3D doesn’t yet run in a Mac OS X browser. Until recently, your only option was to install a copy of Windows on a different partition using Apple’s Bootcamp tool, and boot into it. [...] Sometime in the last few months, however, competitor VMWare came out with an update of their virtualization tool for Mac, Fusion, that does support VE3D." Additionally, The Map Room shares a complete guide to geotagging photos on the Mac. And finally, APB informs us Apple is encouraging iPhone users to help update the Skyhook wifi location database. On a side note, mentioning Apple products looks reasonable since they are increasingly popular even within geospatial professional, with now 14% of computer sold last February and almost a monopoly on portable music devices. Related previous stories added below, including an old one on running ArcGIS on MacOS X, but I admit omitting the numerous previous stories on geotagging photos.