GPS gadget aims to ease geotagging
The ATP GPS Photo Finder is designed to ease the geotagging chore.
(Credit: ATP Electronics)ATP Electronics has announced a device called the GPS Photo Finder that's designed to take some of the trouble out of geotagging your photos.
The device, like many GPS receivers, keeps track of its location based on signals from satellites. What's different is that instead of marrying that location data with your photos on a computer using special software, the Photo Finder has an SD card slot and handles the tagging by itself, the company said. When you copy photos to your computer, the location data is embedded in the JPEG files.
The device should go on sale for $99 in the next couple weeks, said marketing manager Jeffray Hsieh. It also includes a USB port that lets you plug in a flash card reader if your camera uses CompactFlash memory cards or some other format. It's based on the highly regarded SiRF Star III GPS chip.
Sadly, the device supports only JPEG files at this stage. Most photographers shoot only JPEG--indeed, most cameras have no other option--but higher-end models such as SLRs also support raw files, which record the image sensor data with no in-camera processing. And the kind of enthusiasts who shoot raw sometimes are the kinds of enthusiasts who like to geotag photos.
"We'll definitely continue to develop additional support for raw formats," Hsieh said, "but because of the fragmentation between camera manufacturers, it will be a challenge."
The company also plans on adding the ability to export track logs as a KML route file, a record of a person's trip that can be imported into Google Earth software. The company also is planning on adding altitude and direction data that some GPS devices can supply.
The Photo Finder also includes a screen that's can display the time, a feature designed to help nip geotagging time zone complications in the bud.
Personally, I geotag photos for personal archival reasons: which church/mountain/beach was that photo? Various Web sites also can take advantage geotagged photos.
Stephen Shankland covers Google, Yahoo, search, online advertising, portals, digital photography, and related subjects. He joined CNET News in 1998 and since then also has covered servers, supercomputing, open-source software, and science. E-mail Stephen.
-- Product will not tag Nikon Coolpix photos on an SD card
-- There is almost no troubleshooting information in the manual, the device logs, or the web site
-- product turns itself off randomly
-- new work-around software from the company is also unsupported and crashes every time it is run. Plus, if this is so easy to use and people are buying it so they can tag photos without a PC, why is work-around software needed? Because the on card tagging does not work.
-- even if you can get the workaround software to tag a photo, the tags are incompatible with Flickr. If you use Flickr you will just have to manually tag all your photos anyway.
This device will not tag pics on an SD card from a Nikon D60, even though the web site claims that is a compatible camera.
The device turns itself off randomly so all my trips are incomplete and in sections.
Sometimes the device will not turn off at all until I remove the battery.
Battery life is less than claimed.
The small screen uses a dark gray on black font and is unreadable in anything but a dark room.
The data shown is lat/long, it apparently does not calculate elevation.
The 'work-around' software hangs my system.
Even when the device is stationary, it shows that it is moving up to 200 yards in all directions, randomly. This level of inaccuracy is not acceptable.
The waypoints it shows in Google Earth have incorrect time stamps - possibly a bug when dealing with daylight savings time?
There is no tech support contact on the web site - just a useless FAQ.
I have had no response to my emails to the company.
Bottom line: I am about to test Costco's satisfaction guarantee, because this POS is going back. As the first post says, IT DOES NOT WORK.