I've been waiting for consumer-grade easy-to-use GPS-enabled digital cameras to come out since handheld GPS units and digital cameras came out. It seemed like a natural match for documentation purposes, especially if there was a standard for tagging the data. Ricoh came out with the RDC-1700G, an expensive Japanese-only GPS camera last year, but now they've released the Caplio Pro G3, a much cheaper consumer model. It's still only for the Japanese market, but the fact that they made it based on a consumer platform is a good sign that it may be available elsewhere soon. I think that this will be a huge boon to the visual blogging world. I can see services that bring together photoblogging and Indy Junior to make something like GeoSnapper much more acessible. I'm looking foreward to using one, but I can also see the downside: it won't take long for someone to forget to remove the GPS metadata from some picture that really shouldn't have it and then get into trouble.
The next question: when is the GPS-camera-phone going to come out? It only makes sense (as it has for, gee, 5 years?) for these three handheld, plastic, personal information tools to be coupled. Merge the Caplio with the Danger Hiptop with some backend photo management software and you have a pretty serious tool for documenting the world in real time.
You can link photos from a camera phone to an external GPS! All you need is GPS-Photo Link (GPL) software and a computer. With GPL you can creat HTML pages and watermark your photos with the Lat/Long from your GPS. For more information check out www.geospatialexperts.com or email me derek@geospatialexperts.com.
The RICOH Caplio Pro G3 is now also available in Europe. Please visit our website http://www.alta4.com for purchase information.
We also offer a software called GIS PhotoMapper which integrates the photos into ArcGIS from ESRI.
Regards, Ole
Mike,
Just came across this on some web research so I don't know if you'll get this post, but our company does develop & market a tightly integrated digital-camera with GPS, attached to a HP iPAQ PDA for complete geodigital-multimedia field (GDM) data collection -- its called coyotEYE. Check out our web site (www.lupinelogic.com) We'll be introducing an advanced model Q3 2004, coyotEYE-Pro with better camera+flash etc, and also have a high end system that includes a digital compass and laser range finder for Q4 2004 release. Hope that's of interest!
cheers,
Joe Glassy,president
Lupine Logic,Inc.
www.lupinelogic.com
They exist! Not to add further grist to the old myth of Japan being ahead of the curve, but they were rolling out just such beasties a few months ago.
One neat thing I saw was a locator that guided you to the nearest love hotels to your position. Very contextual!
Found a place that appears to sell the Caplio Pro G3 to US markets:
http://us.yesasia.com/en/PrdDept.aspx/pid-1002869753/did-2886/code-c/section-electronics/
However, I'm still not ready to buy it, since it's so first generation.