Mapping photos taken with Windows Mobile
Hi, folks ... I know it's been a while since I posted, but I think you're going to LOVE this one. On a personal note, I've made a move from the Windows Mobile team over to the Windows Stationary team (i.e., the desktop). But that doesn't mean I don't still love writing apps for Windows Mobile!
And here's something to prove it. Check this out:
https://www.blogthevote.net/mapquake/map.aspx?flickr=dstewartms
I cominbed the following technlogies:
1. Windows Moble Smartphone (in my case, the AudioVox SMT 5600)
2. Neil Cowburn's imaging library for .NETCF
4. Flickr (a "moblogging" website that I happen to have a membership to and that has a nice API around it
With all that, and a hearty dose of my own .NETCF and a little ASP.NET magic on the backend, it wasn't too hard to create an app that allows me to take a picture and hit "Send" ...
Two clicks, and a few seconds later, anyone can look at the website and see the picture I took, and where I was when I took it (within a pretty wide range, as I'm on the AT&T network, which does location at the cell-tower level, so you know I'm generally in Seattle, but you can't find me exactly).
Mobile location scenarios really get me excited ... anyone else have some ideas for apps that take advantage of the fact that when you move, so does your device? Let's hear 'em in the comments!
(Adding a couple of comments. If you just go to https://www.blogthevote.net/mapquake/map.aspx you can see the original application I wrote and then "morphed" into this. It uses RSS feeds and MapPoint to map out earthquake data. Also, I do know that the photos are cutting off at the bottom, but since I just wrote this last night, I haven't had a chance to debug -- hopefully I'll get a chance to solve that problem soon!)
[Author: Dave]
Comments
- Anonymous
January 13, 2005
I like was Gregory Torloting said on http://smartnaute.com/?2005/01/13/216-geolocalisez-les-photos-prises-avec-votre-smartphone
C'est expérimental mais ça donne envie...
Which my translator roughly makes into "It's experimental, but that gives desire ..." (in other words, it isn't perfect, but makes you want it!) - Anonymous
January 13, 2005
What a great idea. I think a big problem with moblogging currently is picture context as many users are lazy in describing what their picture is about. Location information mixed in to the picture would give the uninformed viewer more context, this would be a great innovation for moblogging in the future. - Anonymous
January 14, 2005
This is interesting. The Windows Mobile team has combined Flickr's moblogging capabilities with the location data from the AT&ampT network to produce an interesting technology demo. With all that, and a hearty dose of my own .NETCF and a little ASP.NET magic on the backend, it wasn't too hard to create an app that allows me to take a picture and hit "Send" ... Two clicks, and a few seconds later, anyone can look at the website and see the... - Anonymous
January 14, 2005
Yo, David! You contacted me through web form at msombiles.com. Please contact me also through email at info, @, and then msmobiles.com .
And here please answer: how is this example relevant - not everybody developer has free access to MapPoint Location Server as Microsoft employees have?
Also: could you publish source code of the whole solution with description how to get (trial?) access to MapPoint Location Server ?
PS. Greetings to Steve Lombardi - I have interviewed him in France and teased him in Netherlands ;-) - Anonymous
January 14, 2005
I feel sure there's some short cuts here. If the phone knew where it was, it could embed lat/long into the EXIF information in the picture. Flickr is then reading EXIF and perhaps could be persuaded to read it automatically. Further on to the website, there are lots of mapping websites that will take GET parameters of Lat/Long. - Anonymous
January 15, 2005
Julian: Yeah, the "weakest link" here is how I'm interacting with Flickr. I didn't use their API set, really, just their photo upload post. I tied my hands a little bit by growing this app out of an RSS + MapPoint rendering test I was doing (to map earthquakes). Later, when I realized that there was a GEO tag extension in many other RSS feeds, I make it generic to any RSS with a geo tag. However, Flickr doesn't allow you to modify the RSS output with new namespaces, so I sort of had to do a workaround.
Being less concerned about RSS, I could probably just call Flickr directly and do a cleaner job, but then it would be very Flickr-centric, which I don't really want ... would rather than any properly encoded RSS feed to work -- the trick is getting that enocoding in there!
Also, though, if you had the EXIF in the picture data, then it wouldn't matter how you got the pictures, or from what site, as long as you could read the EXIF when you're doing the back-end work, too -- hmm, I just happen to have written a class to read EXIF data from my Nikon D70 that is otherwise generic ... ;-) - Anonymous
January 16, 2005
This is a way cool app... good job... Could you explain further how you got the Lat/Longs from the Broadcast cells? - Anonymous
January 17, 2005
If you're interested in how the location stuff works, see Chandu's blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/cthota/ as well as the official MS homepage for MapPoint Location Server: http://www.microsoft.com/mappoint/products/locationserver/default.mspx - Anonymous
January 17, 2005
Hooking this up to the location-based photo sharing site http://wwmx.org/WebClient.aspx would be cool. - Anonymous
January 19, 2005
You mention that you use the AT&T network with the location provider. Is there an AT&T plugin for the location server? I can only find the Sprint and Bell Mobility. - Anonymous
January 19, 2005
AT&T Wireless was a trial with MS, I think. Not sure when it will be rolled out. - Anonymous
January 24, 2005
Dave,
I have the same setup you have...SMT5600 with ATT Wireless service, so if/when you hear about anything regarding ATT's location services, let us know. Also, if you wouldn't mind posting your code, that would be awesome. Thanks. - Anonymous
April 25, 2006
do you have many mobile photo?
how to enhance these photos?
use Mobile Photo Enhancer
http://www.yaodownload.com/video-design/photoorganizers/mobile-photo-enhancer_photoorganizers.htm - Anonymous
August 07, 2006
Give your camera phone photos a finishing touch! Mobile phones with built-in digital cameras have become very popular today because of their portability and handiness.
http://www.purchaseshareware.com/multimedia-design-media-management/mobile-photo-enhancer-personal-license3263-1.htm