Remote, automated posting to Google Maps

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This is a quick-and-dirty test of live-mapping photos and content from the field using a mobile phone camera, GPS, Picasa photo tools and Google Maps. In short, I posted photos from my Android from location directly to a map on my website.

You may recall I mentioned this concept in my ONA wrap-up. I linked to Cory Haik's nice tutorial in that post, but I'll detail my experience here. This is not rocket science, and the fact I can figure it out means anyone can.

I took photos at each location along or near the Kern River bike path, tagged them with geo coordinates using the phone's GPS tools, wrote short captions and used GMail to email them to Picasa using a secret email address.

The secret email password sends the photos to a specific Picasa "drop box" that I had previously linked to Google Maps. I also had previously embedded that particular Google map on my website (the one seen above), and as new photos showed up in the Picasa drop box, they were also posted live on the map.

You can see how this might be a good tool for reporting from the field. Off the top of my head, I could see a variety of uses, including covering a large wildfire as it spreads, retracing an extended crime scene, documenting Christmas lights in your community or locating multiple properties caught up in mortgage malfeasance.

Or travelogues. These three shots were taken along or near the Kern River bike path, a 26-mile-long path that bisects Bakersfield and stretches from Interstate 5 to the Kern River Canyon. I shot these photos on probably the worst possible day -- foggy and dead winter growth -- but on many days there's lots of activity and wildlife to be documented in detail. If done right, a travelogue capturing life along the path could be a visitor resource for years.

You can build mapped interfaces like this by hand, but they take a lot of time. Why not upload geotagged photos on the fly, then add depth and detail later? Or if you're reporting from the field, have an editor put some polish in the office?