Example Sites, Blogs, and Photos

We've searched the web for data and examples of other lat/long geo-tagged sites. We wanted to show that nothing special is needed in order to map sites or photos.. in fact all of these sites had no idea we were even doing it (ie. it's not that hard). If you want to see how we use BlurbBits, check out our sites (the menu at the top of this page). If you would like your Blog or Photos removed from our examples please contact us.

The easiest way to get started is by adding the Dynamic GeoBlogs to your Blogger blog and then add the lat/lng text in the correct format to each post you want mapped. Remember it's easy to do it one by one but harder to go back and do them all!! We've also noticed that some Bloggers don't take advantage of Mail-To-Blogger posting option (see MoBlogging), 95% of our blogs were emailed from sea. Some of the posts are just simple status updates: with a location (and map), a quick blurb, and a small photo that helps describe our trip (see our Red Sea Blog Album or recent wanderings in the sidebar). All are easily extracted from our blogs with a defined category.

You can also map your Free Picasa Web Albums, and use Picasa to edit your photos while you are disconnected from the internet (see Remote Editing). We support other online photo options (including Flickr) and extract data from various sources (blogger, most georss/rss feeds, google spreadsheet, winlink). The interactive map views also includes Wikipedia and Panoramio photos, available under the Map Type/Options Pulldown menu.

Zac Sunderland

This was the first blog we started tracking during our development.. we've been tracking Zac since July 2008. You can follow Zacs trip through a Trip BlurbBit or through an Interactive Tracking map.

Update July 3rd: Zac is almost done with only 700 nM to go (after completing over 24,000 nM) that's more than 27,500 miles to you landlubbers!! All at a little over 5 mph. The best way to Track his trip is though the slightly custom TrackZac interactive map (it adds a days at sea and to go counter which is off by 500nM). I really wish I could get them to add the dynamic geoblog maps like on our Sailing blog. It's really helpful to see where we were in a certain year, month, or by label (ie. Indian Ocean). Add the automatic popup maps within the post help the reader answer "where is that?".

Roz Savage

Roz is rowing across the Pacific (after already crossing the Atlantic). She just started blogging on Blogspot (since Hawaii) but she does all the right stuff to make our geoblogs and post location extraction work.

Examples: The Trip Tracking BlurbBit or through an Interactive Tracking map. The Where's Roz (full) and Where's Roz (sidebar), isn't that exciting (because she's in the middle of no where) but it can easily be installed on a blog and it points to her latest post at the bottom (open the link in a new window and click i for details). I could do one like I'm Tracking Zac but I'll wait until someone asks for it.

Update 8/27: Roz is still struggling, now header for Tuvalu. I pull the location information directly from the Blog text so it is subject to Human error (or syntax changes). The last couple of posts had syntax issues that prevent correct extraction), I could fix the data externally but I can't update Roz's blog.

Update 8/01: You can see her latest struggles to cross the equator here (map of last 20 posts). She is torn between two Route Options, Tuvalu to the South or Kiribati to the north (the final leg will start next year from her destination). Up to now she has been rowing with the NE tradewinds mostly behind her , as she heads into the South Pacific the winds will turn East and then the SE tradewinds will fill in and move towards her bow pushing her off course instead of helping (Winds are shown as yellow lines on the map). One of our toughest sailing legs was the 1800 nM from Majuro to Fiji along a similar route.. We have a six foot keel and will keep moving when one of us sleeps (Roz doesn't).

Cruising World- Alvah Simon's Blogs

View a BlurbBit Summary Map or interactive Blog Map.

The flexibility of BlurbBits and our interactive BlurbsViewr maps allows us to map existing pages without changing anything on the original site. It's also a great way to tie together multiple sites (and data) if you decide to add a new blog to your site (and why wouldn't you?).

Virgin Global Row

Here's one for ya.. This guy is trying to row around Antarctica and I thought sailing was hard (at least we get to lay there AND move forward).

BlurbBit Blog Map or an Interactve Blog map. (extracted from GeoRSS).

17 days with ONLY 305 miles covered (18,000 nM is the predicted distance and it is expected to take 18-22 months). This will be one to follow.

Google just announced it yesterday (The rowboat and the cloud) and you can follow it on Google Earth.

You can also get the latest position and blog link through a Where? BlurbBit. You can install it on your own blog/website (click i for Info). Add &mi=in to initialize with the in View. You can also view a Blog Album and see the photos, location map and summary of the blog (some photos appear empty ??).

Sandpiper38

Sandpiper uses a modified version of Lat/Lng text so the map will be automatically updated when they add new posts ( View BlurbBit). Sandpiper uses the same technique we use on our blogs.. both quick status updates and full blog posts are combined in the same blog.

BlurbBit Blog Map or the Interactive Blog map

We did find some incorrectly defined lat/lngs that we've manually adjusted, hey when you can't check them how do you know!!

Sailing with Matsu

Matsu uses a Lat/Lng string to define their post location so the map will be automatically updated when they add new posts ( View BlurbBit).

BlurbBit Blog Map or the Interactive Blog map

They also use Picasa albums. Adding a location to each album would allow them to include the albums on their map, along with their blogs.

Yacht Doris

BlurbBit Blog/Albums Map or the Interactive Blog/Albums map including travel track.

Simon investigated sailing as a interest in 2007, bought a new boat in Feb 08 and took off in the Fall .. and sailed Single handed across the Atlantic. wow..

Simon already has a map on his blog but it doesn't change as you navigate the pages so we pay a performance penalty with no gain (a link would be better, BlurbBits dynamic geoblogs would be the best). He also uses Picasa albums to add photos to each post, sometimes the slide shows plays automatically and slows down the blog. We would recommend he changes his Lat/Lng format slightly (move N and W to the end of each section) so we can automatically map the posts. If he adds the location to the picasa albums we can automatically map those and I would switch the slideshows to BlurbBits and/or more them to the read more section with the new Dynamic GeoBlog functionality.

Ohana Kai

BlurbBit Blog Map or the Interactive Blog map

They actually have three sites including two blogs.. the two blogs are combined above. They only seem to use the blog to track their adventures while at sea (like we did originally) but their latest post shows where they finished their Atlantic Crossing. We've found it much easier to match our Picasa and Flickr photos to our blog content and have started to add more photos to our blog since using BlurbBits. A picture is worth a thousand words but sometimes it helps to have some blog text to back up the photos (like our snaps360 blog).

Dick and Libby Tarwathie

Dick and Libby use the same lat/lng format (for recent posts).. so we can automatically update the map based on their latest blog posts.

BlurbBit Blog/Album Map or the Interactive Blog/Album map

More BlurbBits: Recent Blog Posts, Picasa Albums (mapped)
A Picasa Album (from a mapped Picasa Web album)
Winlink Latest Position last 15 reports

We've been working with Dick on some timeout issues that sometimes occur (with slow connections and larger pages?). I would suggest using the new Dynamic geoblog features to highlight the locations since it requires much less bandwidth and no dependence on external feeds (like photos or tracking maps). I would also recommend adding BlurbBits as links (to get dynamic popups) and/or adding them to the fullpost section along with standard Picasa album links for those readers who want to go straight to the Larger size photos (and have a great internet connection). It's a great way to keep the performance optimized and provide in blog maps and photos.

Sunshine

Geotagged photos with optional track overview and last location.
Geotagged albums Click Open link to view photos in album.

Interactive maps

• Blogs/Albums and Track
  The blogs have D M S so the positions might be slightly off..
  
• Geotagged Photos and Track
  Most people don't take the time to geotag each photo (we do), but the resulting map is a good tracking method. The geotag becomes part of the file and can be re-used in all programs that read the data.
  

We would move the slideshow to a post and add a link (or even a popup BlurbBit). Wanna talk about small world.. I was checking out their Blog (testing this) and saw my buddies boat (it's the nice Tri), who just stopped by while driving it cross country!!

SV Rachel

BlurbBit Blog Map or the Interactive Blog map

In order to map their blog locations they just need to adjust the location of the N and W to conform to our format (DD MM.MMM [N|S] DDD MM.MMM [E|W]) hey we have to choose one. Even using this syntax we've found positions that don't map correctly in other blogs (extra characters, no spaces, multiple W etc). It may be easier to use the llz=dd.ddd,dd.ddd,zoom format.

They could also add our winlink blurbbit to the sidebar.

Winlink BlurbBit latest and recent positions

SV Mary Elizabeth

Picasa Photos albums with optional route summary.

BlurbBit Album Map or the Interactive Album map with route and additional track points.

Some suggestions.. I would remove the photos, the map and the slideshow from the sidebar, and move them to posts (with links) or popup BlurbBits. See gadget overload for more details/reasons. When testing performance make sure you clear your browsers cache before reloading (see Dynamic GeoBlogs), this will reload photos in your cache and give you a true sense of the loading speed people will experience the first time they visit (or see new data).

SoggyPaws

BlurbBit Blog/Albums Map or the Interactive Blog/Albums map

Soggy Paws maintains a couple of custom BlogSpot template blogs. The position format must be changed slightly (change - to space) to make the above maps automatic.

Wordpress

Wordpress doesn't allow javascript or iframes within WordPress but you can still map blogs if you put the correct lat/lng format.

Last Location or the BlurbBit Blog Map or the Interactive Blog map.

Wordpress does not support dynamic configurable feed lengths, so you'll only get the number of posts set by the user.

Mapped Picasa Albums..

Picasa allows you to map your photo albums, it's a good way to let people know where the photos were taken (without having to do them all). We like to geotagged all our albums and photos so they appear on maps no matter how we filter them.

Click the BlurbBit link below to get our Albums. Clicking on the Geo-Photos button (top left) will show the album locations. The selected albums location can be seen via the Location Map button (side menu). The album summary is available via Notes and the photos IN the album can be seen via the open link button. Since we load the content from Picasa, any changes and updates automatically appear in the Widget, it's the best way to add all you albums to the side bar.

SailBillabong (ie. Us) BlurbBit Picasa Albums or the Interactive Picasa Albums map with travel track enabled.

Each album (Red Sea Album w/Location) can also be added to a blog entry AND photos can be filtered by tags to match content or highlight your favorites. Tag a new favorite and it will automatically appear in your BlurbBit (and your Blog). Check out Using Online Photos for all of the available options including Flickr. Visit our Sailing Blog to see how we use BlurbBits for our Flickr Photos, or our Photo Blog to see how we add maps to highlight our standard photos. You can also generate a Blog Album which summarizes your blog photos and locations (click Note to read a Blog Summary).

Here's a collection of some albums we've found.

juliemays BlurbBit Picasa Albums or the Interactive Picasa Albums map.

cruzingmurphs BlurbBit Picasa Albums or the Interactive Picasa Albums map.

jaramanpotter BlurbBit Picasa Albums or the Interactive Picasa Albums map.

svenvy BlurbBit Picasa Albums or the Interactive Picasa Albums map.

svtaipan BlurbBit Picasa Albums or the Interactive Picasa Albums map

Ascension BlurbBit Picasa Albums or the Interactive Picasa Albums map.

svtweed geotagged photos of Andaman Ilands. BlurbBit Picasa Photos or the Interactive Picasa Photos map.

svsilverfin BlurbBit Picasa Albums or the Interactive Picasa Albums map.

svcrystalblues BlurbBit Picasa Albums or the Interactive Picasa Albums map.

kestertonm BlurbBit Picasa Albums or the Interactive Picasa Albums map.

largostar BlurbBit Picasa Album Map or the Interactive Picasa Albums map.

travellerkelly BlurbBit Picasa Album Map or the Interactive Picasa Albums map.

Martin.Schaerer BlurbBit Picasa Album Map or the Interactive Picasa Albums map.

chmonkey BlurbBit Picasa Album Map or the Interactive Picasa Albums map.

nancymeridian BlurbBit Picasa Album Map or the Interactive Picasa Albums map.

hsalvenmoser BlurbBit Picasa Album Map or the Interactive Picasa Albums map.

dylangv BlurbBit Picasa Album Map or the Interactive Picasa Albums map.

scrivin BlurbBit Picasa Album Map or the Interactive Picasa Albums map.

mhbscv BlurbBit Picasa Album Map or the Interactive Picasa Albums map.

johng100 BlurbBit Picasa Album Map or the Interactive Picasa Albums map.

Balvenie Picasa:BlurbBit Picasa Albums or the Interactive Picasa Albums map.
Balvenie Blogs: BlurbBit Blog Map or the Interactive Blog map.

Read More

Blogger Mapping Options

1/17/2010 Update: Blogger's Geotagging method is still only available in draft mode after over a year. It has been broken a couple of times and there is still no Blogger supported method for geotagging posts via email.

Note: This post was originally posted on BlogsMapr (our BlurbBits Blogger playground). We wanted to test/support the new Blogger-in-Draft geotagging editor and answer some questions about why you'd want to geotagged posts (can you believe they asked?). We continue to use BlurbBits in our Sailing Blog (via standard Blogger) because it supports remote blogging, has more configurability AND you can specify a locations zoom level on a post by post basis. We have a documented migration path for when the editor becomes more mainstream (and by then we'll be sure to have a utility).

Now What?

You've defined post locations via Blogger-in-Draft, our position text input (for Mail-to-blogger) or by adding stand alone BlurbBits to your posts (to add routes and photos etc).. So now what?

Well we've been GeoBlogging for 3.5 years, using Blogger to track our 5 year 30,000 mile sailing trip, so we've got some ideas and some tools. Here are some cool things you can do with BlurbBits and related utilities.

• Blogger Popup maps and a Dynamic GeoBlog Summary map
  Each post with a defined location will have a popup map within your Blog. In addition, a GeoBlogs on this Page summary map is dynamically created based on the posts on each page. If posts are filtered by searching, labels or selecting an archive month or year, the map will automatically change to show only the relevant geoblog posts. It's a great way to visualize blogs locations for a year or specific area (via label).
  
  
  
  Open our Sailing Blog (standard Blogger) or BlurbBits Playground (Blogger-in-draft) and notice the View map links. They were automatically added via our gadget.
  
  Click on the link to display a quick Google Static Map of the location directly within Blogger (no new page to open). An additional click, in the map, will display the zoomed out view. Try selecting a Blog Archive month and watch the Geo-Blogs map change.
  
• Navigate your blog via an interactive map
  
  
  
  Not only do you get to see your blog locations on an interactive map, we also extract a summary of each post and the first photo for a preview. We maintain the map and open your blog pages directly in the window below (select from the list on the top right or click the [more] link in the preview). The map stays persistent allowing the user to smoothly navigate your geoblog posts.
  
  
  
  On the Add Page Element page click Edit Content and adjust YOURBLOG to the correct location (ie. YOURBLOG.blogspot.com .. blogsmapr for this Blog). If you use FTP posted blogs change blogger=YOURBLOG to bloggerid=BLOGID (blogID=XXX in the post editor URL). Click here for more BlurbsViewr details and options.
• Extract a map for selected Blog posts to embed or email. Maps can be customized based on the desired number of posts and/or filtered by categories/labels. Click the i Info button to select various publishing options. The BlurbBits in the sidebar were extracted from other blogs. Learn how to adjust the widget size for sidebar vs post installs.
  
• Create a "Where Blog map" to embed or email showing the latest geoblog location with a link to the latest post. Same as above using &mv=where and &mi=in.
• Create a GeoBlog photo album. This method extracts the first photo (so make it good) and the post location to create a photo album for the blog. Posts which are geotagged will appear with a Location map button. A short blog summary can be previewed by selecting the notes button. Add &bp=1 to the extract a map example.
  
  Photos stored online with Picasa or Flickr can be displayed in the same album BlurbBit format, examples are scattered throughout all our blogs.
  

Check out our BlurbBits basics section for more details. Most of our sailing blogs were created using Mail-to-Blogger and updated once we got to port and an internet connection.

To see all of our online Sailing content including our Webpage journals and photos, Youtube videos, Blogger posts and KML GPS tracks click here. This data was entered in the BlurbsBits Mapr scratchpad which can be uploaded to the web via Google Spreadsheets.

Read More

Blogger Gadget Overload

You may have seen this banner after you've published a Blogger blog. When you click on the link you literally get thousands of gadgets that are available to add to your Blog sidebar. I've seen plenty of blogs slowed down with too many sidebar gadgets; remember it says choose from thousands, not add them all.

What's the Problem?

The sidebar gets loaded for each and every blog post/page that is viewed. This is fine for some gadgets that change dynamically or load quickly, but for others it just slows down your page load times. Maps and Photos are the perfect example. Once a user has seen the map or looked at the photos they are done. They don't need to see them over and over again, yet they will continue to pay the performance hit EVERY time they visit ANY post/page on your site. Also, the sidebar gadgets are only available within the Blogger environment and are not viewable to followers and those who use your Blogger RSS feed (blog posts are). You wouldn't put a blog post in the sidebar, so why do people put too many gadgets in the sidebar? .. because gadgets make it easy!!

BlurbBits can easily be added to either the side bar or the blog post, just think of them as gadgets that can be published in posts!!

Performance Matters

Even if you are "just" a simple blogger, you have entered the world of website design and the constant balance between performance and visual content. Surveys suggest that if your page doesn't load in 8 seconds, you'll lose up to a 1/3 of your visitors.. but photos, maps and gadgets all enhance the attractiveness of the site, so it's a fine balance. Some bloggers add as many gadgets, photos, and wizbang features they can think of, hoping to increase the chance that something will catch someones eye, but instead end up losing viewers who aren't willing to wait.

If you have a "global" blog you also need to think about users who use older/slower computers with slow internet connections. We frequently get bogged down and frustrated with slow pages during our round the world sailing trip.

Add a Post

Our solution for complex/slow loading or one time use features is to add them to a separate blog post. The slow loading code gets loaded once, and only after the user has chosen to view it. We've also tried to make it just as easy to add a BlurbBit to a blog post as it is to add a sidebar gadget (via publishing options). Update with the new additions to our Dynamic GeoBlog maps you can increase your performance even more by adding slower loading items in the expanded post section and/or adding BlurbBits as links (to posts or the sidebar).

Another reason people add a sidebar gadget is to highlight/feature specific content. You can still highlight posts using a link or HTML/JavaScript gadget which points to your post URLs. Make sure you get the correct URL by clicking on the Title of the post you want to link to (the format should be BLOGURL/YEAR/MONTH/title.html). We use the HTML/Javascript gadget because it is the most flexible. You can have simple links (like the getting started links on the top right) or image links (like svbillabong). See Blogger's guide to basic HTML or this page for more details.

BlurbBits-Sidebar vs Post

We've optimized the performance of BlurbBits for both sidebar and in post use. When BlurbBits are used with online photos the photos are not loaded until the user selects a photo viewing option (improving load times). Most embedded slideshows load the photos and degrade performance during the critical initial page display (including those with autoplay disabled) even if they are way down on the page or sidebar and are not even viewable to the reader.

We use Google static maps in our BlurbBit maps to enhance performance for both in post and sidebar maps. We don't force our slower loading interactive map on everyone, but instead allow users to chose it through our sidebar link gadget. And once we open our interactive map we keep it open (and persistent), changing your blog posts instead of rebuilding the map on every page (as a standard sidebar map does).

We also offer Dynamic GeoBlog maps which are perfect for the sidebar. The map changes automatically based on your blog pages content. Your latest location will appear highlighted on your blogs home page, while an archive or label selection will show your mapped locations for the selected period or label. We even add a popup map within Blogger to highlight a post location for those that were emailed remotely or end up hidden by partial post methods.

We are not suggesting you get rid of all your sidebar gadgets, just suggesting that you think about the usage model and decide whether or not to add a BlurbBit as a sidebar gadget or in a post (see publishing options). Here are a some good sidebar uses:

• Picasa Albums SideBar
  Since this BlurbBit opens each album (via Open Link) in a medium BlurbBit popup, the user can see photos for all your albums quickly. New albums or changes to existing albums will automatically be updated. An individual album can also be published to a sidebar BlurbBit but it is much nicer in a post size BlurbBit. See Online Photos for more details. Note: you can hide the top BlurbBit menu with the far right arrow button.
• Travel Blog Tracking
  The Blogger extract parameters can be used to a quick blog history map or another blogs Where map. The BlurbBits will be automatically updated when changes to the blogs are made.
• Travel Route
  Use the BlurbBits Mapr utility to quickly draw you travel route (planned or actual). Then load it into a route map sidebar gadget.
• Extracted data
  We can also extract data from various sources including winlink, Google Spreadsheets, GeoRSS feeds and moblog photo maps.
  

Keeping up with the changes

As you start adding BlurbBits to posts it can be hard to keep your readers informed of the changes. The good news is all of your new BlurbBit post will appear at the top of your page (and in your feed) so those are covered. If you add BlurbBits to older posts or change a post date (to make the travel track work) the blog order can get jumbled and it's hard for existing readers to keep track of your updates (but better than miss-dating a post).

When we add major new features to our blog sidebar (like interactive maps) we usually write a "news release" post just to keep people in the loop (and focus them). You can also use a Blogger feed to get a list of changes. Just like BlurbBits, your Blogger feed can be configured via Url Parameters (see Blogger example and Full parameter descriptions).

You can use the orderby=updated parameter to see the recent changes you've made to your blogs (by date is the default) but this will show ANY updates you've made including small typo fixes etc. You can also search for blogs with a certain labels using the category=label parameter. If you label blogs with featupd (or anything else) you can combine the two parameters to get a feed for your featured updates. Then you can label/unlabel posts based on those changes you wish to highlight. See our example for BlurbBits latest Blogger updates. You can add this as a feed as a link in your sidebar. We are already prototyping some enhanced functionality for BlurbBit links!!

Read More

Picasa - Remote Photo Editing

We love traveling to remote places, taking lots of pictures and sharing our experiences through our Blogs. One of our main issues is the lack of internet access because most photo sharing sites force you to make collections and albums online.

Picasa is great because you can add captions and tags, edit and organize your photos into albums all without internet access. You can even Geotag your Picasa photos in Google Earth while it is offline. Then once you find an internet connection you can upload your photos to your Picasa Web Albums and easily turn them into BlurbBit Albums that you can add to your Blog Posts.

Picasa is really two tools, Picasa which lives on your local computer (and manipulates your local photos) and Picasa Web Albums which manages photos you choose to upload and share on the web (BlurbBits uses these). Note: BlurbBit references to Picasa relate to the shared web albums.

Upload via Direct Internet Connection

If we have a direct Internet connection we use Picasa Upload (from your computer).

Choose or Create an Album, Select the Image size. Since we usually only use the photos for our blog, we use the small size to save space and prevent printing of our photos.

Upload at Internet Cafe

If we don't have direct access, we use Picasa Export to save the selected photos to a new folder.



Then we copy the directory to a USB stick. Once you are at the internet Cafe, Log onto Web Albums and use the Upload button. Select or create a new album and add the files from your stick, it's a little slower this way but sometimes it beats lugging your computer to the Cafe.

If you use Flickr or another photo sharing site, use Picasa Export to save the selected photos to a new folder. Upload the photos from the new folder using your sites uploading instructions.

MoBlogging and Photo Maps

Picasa Web Albums supports email upload or you can use Blogger to upload your blog text and photos from a remote location. Check out the details here.

Photo Album and Map

Once an album is uploaded you can map the photo albums. This is much easier than geotagging ALL your individual photos (we support both). We also make it easy to build a BlurbBit (w/Map + Photos) using the BlurbBits Mapr. If you add the resulting BlurbBit to a blog post, we use it to determine the posts location. Once we have the posts location we can map that too, all that from a single mapped Picasa Album!! If you add/modify the photos or change captions/notes to photos in the album, all the changes will appear in the BlurbBit automatically.

Note: the same process can be used remotely with any non-web based photo editing tool that saves Exif data (like Adobe Photoshop Lightroom) . Test a couple of photos (raw vs jpeg) to make sure you have complete data (captions and geotags) before going too crazy. We do need the photos online (Picasa or Flickr) to gain access to them. Picasa has good synchronization between your photos on the PC and the Web Albums.

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MoBlogging - Blogger on the Go

Update: We are also reviewing posterous for remote email blogging AND photo sharing. Posterous' focus is "dead simple" blogging via email. Blogger's email functionality is very limited and support/updates to the email method are non-existent.

Sometimes you want to blog but you can't access the internet directly (i.e you're in the middle of the ocean 1000 of miles from the nearest Internet Cafe).

BlurbBits for this Entry

Blogger has two methods to support moblogging which can be used to add text, a small photo, or both (hey I didn't make up the term).

• Mail-To-Blogger
  95% of our sailing blog posts were created this way and since BlurbBits also supports the extraction of Lat/Long from the post text, maps can be made from the middle of no where.. literally! We edit, organize and caption/tag our photos underway and then upload them into BlurbBit Photos Albums once we find internet. You can also use tags/labels to filter the photos to match your post content. Here's an example Picasa Album Post (made using a geotagged Picasa Album in the BlurbBits Mapr).
• Blogger-Mobile
  Send an MMS to go@blogger.com to create your mobile blog.

Geo MoBlog Photo Maps

Note: this section is mostly applicable to Blogger-Mobile users who take photos with a GPS enabled device and want to map their tracks through photos NOT blog post content.

If your photos are geotagged (either manually or via a geotagging enabled phone) you can easily create a photo based map of your travels. When images are uploaded to Blogger, an album is automatically created in Picasa Web Albums. Go there, find your Blogs Album and click on the link (notice the AuthKey in the URL you'll need that).

In the examples below, use the i (Info) button to view the embedding options. Use the Blogger AddGadget button to add to the sidebar and the BlogThis button to add to as a new post. Adjust the &width and &height to match your blog layout size and usage (sidebar vs post).

Interactive Examples:

&picasa=SailBillabong:IndianOceanPictures&pm=1&width=220&height=200&mark=smallred&smark=smallred

Our Indian Ocean Photos Mapped

&picasa=SailBillabong:IndianOceanPictures:start-index=10&pm=1&width=220&height=200&mark=smallred&smark=smallred

Skip the first 10 photos from our Photos Above.

&picasa=SailBillabong:IndianOceanPictures:start-index=10

Show the Album Photos to find the correct start-index.

&picasa=SailBillabong:Sailing2007&pm=1&mark=midredx&smark=smallred&width=220&height=200

The Sailing2007 map from SailBillabong (try Sailing2004, Sailing2005, Sailing2006). The X mark represents the end of the year location

&picasa=SailBillabong:BillabongAtSea:authkey=VtVRMtCavYI&pm=1&width=220&height=200&mark=smallorange

The BloggerAtSea Blog Album map. Unpublished Albums require AuthKey shown in Album Url

Picasa orders their feeds starting with the first photo taken, so you may need to adjust the start-index to focus on a certain portion of the trip. Leave off the &pm=1 and make sure you are starting with the correct photo. Once you have completed a trip you can copy a set of photos into a new Album which details the trip. Do not move or delete the photos, they will be removed from the Blog post.

I have already seen photo blogs dedicated only to geotagged photos for tracking purposes. The photos are usually horrible quality and the posts don't include text, which in my mind is pretty much a completely useless Blog. If you are only using photos to track your travels it makes more sense to use Picasas email upload.

Picasa Email Upload

Picasa also supports email upload of photos and you can place them into specific albums by using an existing album name as the email subject. If your mobile device supports geotagging you can easily get a map of just that album using the method above, use the album name to differentiate various trips. You can even highlight your favorite photos in a BlurbbBits photo album in a Blog post about your trip.

Interactive Travel Photo Maps

You can even use the same data to build an interactive map by using the same URL parameters with the BlurbsViewr.

Here's the BlurbsViewr map for our Indian Ocean Pictures (?picasa=SailBillabong:IndianOceanPictures).

If your photos are taken sequentially along your travel path you can add &tt=travel&mi=out to the URL to create a Travel Tracking Path with a calculated total distance - (select Trip Summary from the list in the upper right).

Extracting geotagged data

If you have a GPS Enabled phone or an automatic method for geotagging your photos, the location data you need is already hidden inside it. You can easily extract the Lat/Lng data using the BlurbBits Mapr and then use it to geotag your blog posts.

Here's the Indian Ocean Pictures. Click on sidebar list to navigate/zoom to a photo. The Center Lat,Lng,Z: field is the Lat/Lng and zoom of the photo location. Use the first two fields for the Lat/Lng in the Blogger-in-draft location editor to geotag the Blogger post (don't forget to remove the comma).

You can also use mapr to add a BlurbBit map of this location into your blog post. If you are using the non draft version of Blogger, this also allows the blog post to be mapped.

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Cool Things To Try

Here's some cool things to try with BlurbBits

This assumes you have a little understanding of how BlurbBits and the BlurbBits Mapr work.

Fun with Photos

One of the main reasons we go though the effort of selecting, organizing (tagging and captioning) and cataloging our photos (into albums or sets) is for our own enjoyment. There is nothing like an album of your favorite photos to stir up some memories to reflect on past adventures.

If you don't have a blogger account sign up for one. It's easy and you'll be Blogging in two minutes.

BLURB-THIS - a BlurbBit & Blog for a Picasa Album:

&picalbums=SailBillabong

Photo albums from SailBillabong (try your Username)

• UserName is your Picasa login name
  Login and check the path http://picasweb.google.com/UserName
  ex: use SailBillabong for ...com/SailBillabong
• Learn More

Open the Albums by clicking the Icon and make sure some albums are found for your account. You are also welcome to use ours as an example.

Now run the BlurbBits Mapr with the album URL parameters from above (replace the & with ?). ex: ..setup.html?picalbums=SailBillabong

This will load the Picasa albums in the sidebar and place those with a defined location on the map (ah the glory of data re-use). Click on an album and if it is not already placed, drag it onto the map and click to set the location (and current zoom). If you are using this album to define a Blogs location adjust it as needed. This is where it helps to use the LLZ to pin point the location/zoom and then drag the album to it. Adjust the zoom level if needed; find the zoom level you like and use RMC set Zoom. Adjust the Map or Photo Parameters as necessary (don't forget toggle to update). Try adding these for a start &mark=midredx&smark=tinyred (append to the end of the extras line) . Preview your BlurbBit, open the photostrip and select the photo you feel best summarizes the photos or thoughts. Make any adjustments and re-Preview. Once satisfied, select the i (info) button and click the BlogThis button.

A Blog Your Bit popup will appear. Click the Login button and login into your Blogger account (you only need to do this once). Choose your Blog (if you have more than one) and then write your post; add more details about the trip, add any reflections you may have had or just describe the album. The BlurbBit will replace the [BLURBBIT] tag, so feel free to add text before and/or after. Select Publish Post. The unformatted blog will appear below as a preview, select the link to navigate to the actual blog post (or view Our Sample result .. cheater).

Now that wasn't that bad, you've got a blog post describing your trip or photos, an entire albums worth of photos, complete with captions, geo-photo map, notes and a link to the Picasa photos online. If you have your photos tagged (or in sets via Flickr) you can easily filter them to a specific topic or location that you want to write about. Filter your Photos and write your Blog or write your blog and then find the photos that match your topic.. it's that simple.

Then slice and dice the results into different views...

Interactive Examples:

&blogger=blogsmapr

A Blogger map for blogsmapr.blogspot.com

&blogger=blogsmapr&bp=1

A Blog Album (blogs with photos only)

&blogger=blogsmapr&mv=where&mi=in

A BlurbBits "Where" Blog map with link to latest post and last known location.

And ..
An interactive Blog navagation map with similar viewing options (last location or full view).

When you are finished with the Album don't forget to unset the update toggle or you will overwrite the other albums on subsequent previews. In most cases the update toggle is a good way to set the default preferences for many objects. Picasa albums are the only objects that come pre-configured (so far).

If you want to add a path or route to your album, use the RMC to set the map to add line mode and use left mouse clicks to draw your line (use RMC to stop adding points). Then select the entire path description to the right of the Preview BlurbBit Button and copy it (CTRL-C or RMC copy). Select the album and paste the new path at the end on the Extras line. Don't forget to replace the ? with a & (we'll remind you). Make sure the Select Toggle is enabled and Preview your new addition. Double check your photo maps if you changed the zoom of your album location. If the line doesn't appear make sure the Select toggle in On!! (My Sample Route result).

Now you added a travel map and favorite, last or average position to all the photos, not a bad way to enhance your blog. It doesn't stop there, if you have more than just a blog, you can map ALL your webpages. Here is all of our SailBillabong journals, photo albums (the old way), videos and our blogs (automatically updated).

If you are using a public machine don't forget to logout of your Blogger account.

An interactive Trip Photo Album map

The good thing about maps is they give users a really good sense of your travel destinations. The bad thing is you need to define where you were in order to build them. If you already have geotagged photos they'll automatically appear on the Viewr map. If not ..the thought of geotagging 25,000 photos is mind boggling. The good news is you don't really need to geotag every photo to map them, just the albums or your own web pages that display the photos.

Picasa albums are really easy because you only need to set one location per album and we automatically convert the album into a BlurbBit with all the photos.

Run the BlurbsViewr with your Picasa Album
ex: .../blurbsviewr.html?picalbums=SailBillabong

Your albums will appear with the latest album highlighted. When you open the album (select from the list, click [more] or double click on the icon) the BlurbBit for album photos will open in the window below. Quick and easy way to navigate all you trip photos eh?

There's more.. if your albums represent a single trip (like ours) you can create a rough Travel Track with the date and location of the albums. Add &tt=travel&mi=out to the BlurbsViewr album parameters (or Try Ours).
ex: .../blurbsviewr.html?picalbums=SailBillabong&tt=travel&mi=out
You'll find out VERY quickly how accurate your dates and locations are. Highlighting the Trip Summary will display the approx distance Traveled.

If that's too much work to clean up, you can draw the lines in the BlurbBits mapr and save them to a Google Spreadsheet. See our Example with Drawn Tracks. These paths can also be used when creating a standalone BlurbBit of just the album to embed on your page.

The ultimate trip photos map.. all of our individual geotagged photos and our drawn lines or you can overlay them with our actual GPS tracks (from KML).

Remember if you don't use Picasa albums you can still use the ScratchPad to enter your data for each page and then use a GoogleSpread sheet to extract the data for the Viewr. You can even combine your photos and your blogs on the same map or heck do everything. Don't forget the best part, any changes or additions you make (to extracted data) will be updated on the map. As we add BlurbBits to our new Blog Posts they will automatically appear on the map, we don't have to do anything!! Yes!!

GeoTag and Educate with Wikipedia

We like to share more than just our photos,blogs and journals. If you've read our Blog you know we frequently refer to Wikipedia articles so that reader can learn more if they are interested. A nice quick introduction through our travels with some notes, to a full on encyclopedia at the ready.. the reader can choose!!

Wikipedia is a great free online encyclopedia FULL of information AND geotag data. Most geocoding services are focused around address etc but Wikipedia covers almost everything. I've found Suwarrow in the Cook Islands (no full time inhabitants) and Niuatoputapu in Tonga both rather remote by modern standards of travel. They even had Onotoa the first place we went that wasn't in our Lonely Planet.

Go to the Main Page and enter a search string in the left hand side. Find the article you are looking for and note the top right hand corner. If there is a globe with a link click the link to open the Geo Hack Page. Look for Coordinates (second line) and enter the decimal value into the BlurbBits Mapr Center Lat,Lng,Z: text box, and select Move. You can also enter the decimal value directly as an &llz= parameter (add a ,zoom value if desired).

This is a great place to search for more information and who knows, you might even learn something while you're there. Save the path so you can add a link to your blog/website. If you find an article that doesn't have a reference but you find one, consider adding it to Wikipedia.

The Ultimate Off Line GeoTagging Combo

We use Google Earth at Sea on Billabong (without Internet!!) to help in areas where charting is poor. It is amazing how good the imagery is, you can clearly see most reefs and in some cases you can even find the sandy patches where you want to set your hook. First you must visit the areas you are interested in while connected to the internet. Keep an eye on the Streaming indicator which appears just below and a little to the right of the Earth. When this indicator has reached 100% the imagery you're viewing is fully loaded and saved to your cache. Increase the cache size to get the most out of your data and you can even use the Touring Places feature to automatically store data based on a set of placemarks (ie. Markers) you setup.

As if that isn't cool enough, Picasa has a geotagging feature that works directly with Google Earth. You can even use your saved GPS tracks to import into Google earth to help find the date/time and position for your photos. There is even a program that does it automatically. The problem is most people either don't have a GPS or haven't saved their tracks, so the manual placement mode via Picasa/Google Earth is necessary. The good news is once you've done it, the data lives within the photo as metadata so tools like Picasa and BlurbBits have access to it.

If you have GPS tracks saved and want to get them into Google Earth check out GE GPS import (for the non free versions) or look into the ultimate GPS Utility (in and out of MaxSea, Google Earth etc) or a online translation program called GPS Visualizer. In most cases GPS data stretches the limits of the Static Map APIs 50 Point, however we are working on some potential solutions (Douglas-Peucker algorithm) but will certainly support it in our interactive maps (we've got 28,500 nM of GPS tracks.. We'll make something work).

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Known Issues

There is an NEW bug in the underlying Google static maps that causes Blurbbits cross the dateline to appear incorrectly. This was just introduced in April. However we have been struggling for almost a year to provide workarounds (see issues 565 and 596.. ah the joys of APIs and putting Google in your critical path).

Special Characters

Be careful when using special characters for BlurbBits Mapr labels or the &mtitle= parameter. We will handle them correctly but some sharing sites have problems with ' in the title. If you add a ' it will appear in correctly in your BlurbBit title you might run into issues down the road.

We've recently noticed some strange characters that appear in various random feeds, possibly due to cut and paste of text into a document that wasn't expecting it. This can effect the ScratchPad. The ScratchPad does NOT have word wrap enabled so if you see any extra text at the beginning of the line make sure your append it to the previous line, move up on line, use the end key (or move to the end) and use the backspace button to remove extra characters. If you see R| or L| you've gone one too far. Hit Enter or use Ctrl-Z to undo.

Blogger

There are a couple of issues with Publishing Gadgets and Posts. The workarounds are listed, hopefully Blogger will fix them soon.

Copy and Paste. If a BlurbBit is published in a blog post, Blogger will convert all & to & which causes problems if you are copying and pasting the BlurbBit from Blogger into a new blog post. Add &design=true to your blog post (republish and click info) and copy the result out of the i (info) button design mode popup results or paste the code into a text file first and replace all & with & and paste the result into your new post.

Internet Explorer (IE) specific issues. For some reason IE strips the BEGIN/END BlurbBit comments while re-editing in compose mode. IE6 causes browser failure when switching to Compose editor mode with Iframes in the Blog spot (like BlurbBits).

BlurbBits Mapr

At some zoom levels the lines will disappear from the map. Google is working on a fix, the work around is to change zoom levels slightly. This should not effect the result in BlurbBits, it just makes it harder to find things. When editing a long line that crosses 180, sometimes the segment edit points won't appear (they are on the other side of the world). Zoom out and drag a segment end point closer to 180.

BlurbBits Maps

There is a known Static Maps API issue with lines that cross 0 degrees and 180 degrees (ie. go around the world). Break the line into two pieces at one of the above degrees. ie. Add a point at 0,0.001 and then another at 0,-0.001; Both paths can be added to the BlurbBits (as separate paths) and you won't see the difference. Occasionally a line will appear on a zoomed in location coming from the wrong direction. Adding a new line section point closer to the end location seems to fix the problem. Check out blogsmapr blog for some working(and broken) circumnavigation examples.

Remember to keep the number of points under 50 and don't try and add too much detail to your lines. If you are dealing with 0 or 180 crossings add a couple extra points near the crossing. You can imagine it's difficult to know what line you are talking about. Yes there are two points, but is it the short distance between the two, or the round the world distance you are trying to define. Breaking the path into shorter segments makes the path easier to define (for the Static Maps API).

Extracting Images

As you can imagine extracting the first photo (<img tag) can result in some interesting results if someone doesn't know you are looking for them. In the future we are planning some additions which will allow you to tag a photo as the one to extract. We are still trying to figure out a solution to avoid all the random images that sometimes appear (or are added by feed processing) in the feed (link icons, feed email links etc). The easiest thing is to come up with a standard photo you what to appear as your place holder (like a larger size favicon) and place it in your post before the unwanted photo. You can easily hide it by adding style="display:none" to the image tag.

Internet Explorer

If only browsers followed a standard our lives would be MUCH easier. IE removes comments when switching between Edit HTML and Compose mode. You'll only lose your start and end BlurbBit references but it is a pain.

There was an issue with Dynamic GeoBlog maps. Internet Explorer doesn't handle automatic addition of the GeoBlogs Map (it shifted sidebar items). We've changed the code to work around this issue.

IE 6.0 (what are you DOING using such an obsolete insecure and ridiculously slow browser?) causes a major problem with the Blogger Compose mode and is nearly unusable with interactive Google maps.

Firefox is a FREE standards compliant browser.. and It rocks!!

Firefox

Well we came up with our first Firefox specific Bug.. in certain situations Iframes (embedded BlurbBits) will swap src (ie. the wrong Iframe gets added). This is particularly noticable with the new Expandable posts and GeoBlog maps. Since the dynamic geoBlog map is the last Iframe to get added it sometimes gets the wrong src (Adsense, another BlurbBit etc). The fix is to reload the page if the GeoBlog map does not appear correctly. You can also use the new dynamic link to popup feature to avoid the issue (no Iframe).

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