Cooliris and YouTube gives a great way of viewing videos from your site.

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Flickr and Cooliris make a great way to show a gallery. Here’s a quick photo stream wall I created in just a few minutes.
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Here’s the scenario, you’ve been out shooting at a remote location or maybe just around town and now your ready to get your photos processed and online. But wait, you also need to Geotag all those photos so everyone can see where you were. Best thing of all about geotagging, you won’t forget where you’ve been (something that happens to many of us raised in the 70′s).

For most of us, the standard way to Geotag is getting our shots onto a location map via Zooomr, GoogleMaps, GoogleEarth, Flicker and other more intricate ways. The problem is it requires hours of searching for each location and dropping batches of photos or for those with a lot of time on their hands, dropping each photo onto the exact spot you took the picture(s)

Well for me, I barely have enough time to shoot and process my pictures as it is. So, I started searching the internet, reading articles and talking to pink elephants (oops your not supposed to know that). I came to the conclusion that most of the automatic ways (shooting with a GPS attached to your camera and info being placed directly into the EXIF of the picture) are at least $300 – $500. I’m not cheap but I knew there must be a more economical way and there is.

By getting a GPS logger ($150 for name brands and under $100 for the unit I’m using) to record your tracks, you can easily download that data and create a datalog file (GPX works great). Then all that is left is getting your photos onto your computer, drop your photos (RAW or JPEG – Yes this solution works with RAW!) and data into a Geotag matching software and it’s done – Yeah I know, I get a little excited when things work with RAW. This is the best solution I’ve found yet to Geotag my RAW pictures.

But you ask where are the details RandyMan? If you made it through all my babble, then you deserve to get the cake and eat it to —->

RAW or JPEG - This writing is mostly for those shooting in RAW and on a Mac - For those shooting in JPEG and on a PC – the solution comes pre-packed with any decent GPS.

In a discussion I had with Thomas Hawk and others, the main concern is how well the GPS picks up the satellite signals. The Qstar BT-1000 has 51 Channels (that’s an ability to pick up 51 satellites!) A High Standards for most GPS’s are around 32 channels.

• Mac Users: You do need windows to get the data out of this GPS – But this GPS rocks!! I get connection inside my house! – Another Solution would be to buy a GPS that is compatible with HoudaGEO.
• PC Users: For JPEG shooting – all software needed comes with the GPS.

1. Get yourself a GPS Data Logger – I bought the “Qstarz BT-Q1000” $99.95 . This one is bluetooth and doubles as a Navigation device to use with my laptop, PDA or any bluetooth Navigation program. This comes with a Window base application to set your logger defaults and retrieve the data. (Sorry Mac guys – need to install Parallels or run bootcamp). There are many to choose from Garmin, Magellan, Wintec, but I’ve heard great stuff about this Qstarz and I’ve yet to have an issue with it. -Here’s an Assortment of GPS’s to check out.
2. Download HoudaGEO for the Mac – Demo is limited and full version is $40. (only problem is that HoudaGEO doesn’t have a driver to recognize Qstarz yet – you could get a Garmin for $150)
3. Turn your GPS on at the beggining of your adventure, put it in your pocket or backpack (I had this thing in my glove compartment without any issues) and when your finished turn it off. (Special note: Using it inside of a building can cause issues).
4. Plug your GPS via USB into your computer and turn it on (switch to log if required) and start up the GPS Software that came with the device. In my case it’s “Travel RecorderV3″ works better then V4. Press the “Connect” button.
5. Press “Download” data from the GPS. All your logs are now viewable – depending how long you had it on, it could be excessive (don’t worry) – The Qstarz BT-Q1000 can track up to 200,000 waypoints. That means in a period of 24 hours you can set this thing to record your position every 2.3 seconds. WOW!!
6. Save data as a GPX file. (I put it into the folder of the shots it belongs to, but it doesn’t matter – you just need to know where the file resides).
7. Now go into your Mac environment and open HoudaGEO. Select the photos that you want to Geotag and simply drag them into HoudaGEO.
8. Next, click on the icon for downloading file and find your GPX file. Now like magic it matches the time of the photo with the time in the GPS Logger and instantly all pictures are Geotagged.
9. Last part – Click “Write to EXIF” and you’re done . . now all your RAW files (or JPEGS) are Geotagged!! YEAH!

HoudaGEO will also let you:

• Export directly into GoogleEarth - Drive to Work - You need Google Earth for this link to open properly. – Download Here -Don’t pay any attention to the shots – They’re bad, I know – But it worked perfectly! (within 5-10 feet of where I took the shot)
  
• Save KMZ or KML file (This is a file you can send to your friends with tracking info and Pictures)
• Upload into Flickr.

This process takes about 5 – 10 minutes tops to do about 350 photos. The only way to shorten this time is to get a GPS that is compatible with HoudaGEO as stated early, but no guarantees on how strong of a signal you’ll receive with the satellites.

In a nutshell – I do not want to fork up extra $’s for something that will get better with time or at least until I see a 16GB Compact card that doubles as a GPS. The future does look promising – Check out this cool new device: ATA Photo Finder – it came out the end of last year, but I have no idea how well it tracks.

If you have any other work flows and/or GPS’s that work good for you – share the knowledge and leave a comment.

Hopes this helps out some of you.