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Of course I was excited when I learned that Flickr launched the new "map it" feature, allowing a user to drag and drop an image on a map location for easy geotagging. And overall, the new interface (part of the "Organize" tab within the Flickr application) is nice and a great example for a mash-up well done.
But... and this is a real downer, especially if you are used to the map quality of Google Maps or the image detail available in Google Earth, the maps and satellite images at Yahoo! Maps are far inferior to similar services, therewith making exact geotagging close to impossible for locations outside the U.S. (It's OK if all you care about is the city or a general area.)
The screen shot below is for Hamburg, Germany, a major European city with far more than 1.7 million inhabitants, and not the Namibian desert. The map fails at neighborhood zoom level and even the satellite view is very, very grainy at best.
So for now, I am not really impressed because it's the detail available in the maps that make this addition to Flickr useful for the international user. One can only hope that Yahoo!'s map data will improve over time.
[Click on image to enlarge.]
29. August 2006 at 02:53 PM
tagged with:
flickr
, yahoo