Geotag

CES Innovations Awards are given out every year to the most innovative consumer electronics products in 35 of industry's hottest product categories. Casio has the honor of being named a CES Innovations 2011 Design and Engineering Award Honoree for its EX-H20G Hybrid-GPS digital camera.

Casio's EX-H20G H20G uses Hybrid-GPS technology for precise location data for the geotagging of photos and videos and is the first camera able to geotag indoors. The 14.1 megapixel H20G comes packed with features including sensor shift image stabilization, 720p HD video, and a 24mm, 10x optical zoom lens. The camera can also display a user's current location - as well as geotagged photos and videos - on a map which can be viewed right on the camera itself. Read more

It's been some time since we've heard from LEICA, and with good reason it seems. The company has been hard at work producing its first compact superzoom digital camera, the 12.1 megapixel LEICA V-LUX 20. Packed with a DC-VARIO ELMAR lens, GPS tagging, HD movie recording and automated functions, the V-LUX 20 is great for the amateur as well as the more experienced photographer.

Features include a 3-inch LCD display with 460,000 pixel resolution, 12x optical zoom lens (25–300mm equivalent), 720p HD video recording, and manual shutter speed and aperture settings. The V-LUX 20 is the first LEICA digital camera with GPS tagging, recording both the location and the local time for every picture. The V-LUX 20 can also display the names of sightseeing locations from 500,000 points of interest across 73 countries.Read more

Eye-Fi just announced at CES its next generation WiFi-enabled SD card, the 8 GB Eye-Fi Pro X2. Powered by Eye-If's new X2 Engine, upload speeds are faster than ever, read/write speeds are faster, and it has a better WiFi range with the addition of 802.11n.

The Eye-Fi Pro X2 wirelessly uploads images and videos from your camera to computer and online photo and video sharing sites, such as Flickr, Picasa or Facebook. Also, the Pro X2 automatically geotags photos with information about where the images were taken.Read more

Samsung today announced the new CL65, a 12.2 megapixel digital camera that features built-in geotagging, Bluetooth, DLNA compatibility and Wi-Fi.

With built-in geotagging, the CL65 displays the city on the camera's LCD screen, showing the location where you're taking a photo, as well as a reference for when you are reviewing the images. It also includes embedded PC software package 'intelli-studio', so you can view, edit and manage pictures on the camera before uploading them.

Thanks to Bluetooth 2.0, you can wirelessly send your photos to other compatible devices. And with a Wi-Fi connection, you can email photos directly from your camera and upload them to social networking sites. The CL65 also has DLNA connectivity, so you can wirelessly connect to other DLNA devices in your networked home, such as an HDTV, to view images.Read more

Eye-Fi recently announced the Geo card, a new wireless SD memory card exclusive to Apple, that allows users to automatically upload photos from a digital camera to a computer and offers lifetime geotagging service. Available now in all Apple stores and online, the Eye-Fi Geo card is the latest addition to the Eye-Fi product family and is built to seamlessly integrate with Mac products and applications, including iPhoto '09 and '08, the iPhone and MobileMe.

The Eye-Fi Geo wirelessly uploads photos straight to a folder on your computer or Apple's iPhoto gallery where they arrive automatically geotagged with location information about where the image was captured.Read more

Garmin just announced two new touchscreen handheld GPS devices – the Oregon 550 and Oregon 550t. These are not your average GPS units. Weighing only 6.8 ounces, they are waterproof, feature a 3-axis compass and include a built-in 3.2 megapixel autofocus digital camera that automatically geotags images.

Along with automatically geotagging each photo with the location of where it was taken, the digital camera in the Oregon 550 features a 4x digital zoom and allows you to take and view pictures in landscape or portrait mode. It also includes 850 MB of internal memory. Need even more memory? The 550 has a microSD card slot for more storage of photos and mapping. Your pictures can also be stored and shared online. Simply connect the device via USB, go to my.Garmin.com, then upload and store the photos on Picasa for all your friends to see. Read more

According to the Consumer Electronics Association's 2009 report Digital Imaging - A Focus on Sharing, more than 40% of consumers who share videos think it takes too much time to upload them. They won't be thinking that anymore. Now, with Eye-Fi's newest wireless memory cards, you can upload your videos wirelessly and automatically directly from your digital camera to Picasa, Photobucket, SmugMug, YouTube and Flickr. You don't even have to turn on your camera! Could it get any easier than that?

The 4GB Eye-Fi Share Video and Eye-Fi Explore Video cards also automatically geotag photos and videos with location information of where the video or picture was taken. Hotspot access is available from more than 10,000 Wayport and open hotspot locations in the United States to upload when you're away from home.

Eye-Fi's newest wireless SD memory cards are now available with an MSRP of $79 (4GB Eye-Fi Share Video) and $99 (4GB Eye-Fi Explore Video).

For more information visit www.eye.fi.

BaseCamp is Garmin's new software for planning and later displaying outdoor activities. It will be great for hikers and geocachers.

The topo maps render in 3D in addition to the normal 2D view. Track Draw builds a track to simulate the route. This conveniently can project a view to show the elevation change of the planned route.

There is photo support but not much detail yet how geotagged photos are viewed and managed. For a nice integration feature, tracks can be viewed in Google Earth. Users of geocaching.com can bring data from there into BaseCamp too.

It will be released for PC and Mac at the end of the first quarter 2009. It will be part of the Garmin TOPO U.S. DVD's and as a free download for existing users of TOPO U.S. 2008. For more information, go to www.garmin.com.

Known for creating the first wireless memory card for digital cameras, this iPhone application is a natural extension for Eye-Fi.

iPhone users can send photos to their computer or upload to one of 25 online photo sharing or social networking sites. Photos can also be automatically tagged with location information (geotag).

The application will be shown at Macworld, January 6-9, 2009. To learn more about this application or receive an email when it is available, go to www.eye.fi/macworld.