"Picture" your exact location

Normally, when you take a picture, your only connection to that location is the photo itself. For example, if you go backpacking and discover a beautiful waterfall off the beaten path, you can photograph it but you may never be able to find that location again. "Geo-referencing" solves this problem by saving your exact location (longitude and latitude) inside a digital photograph file.

The benefits of being able to see exactly where you took a photograph are obvious: rather than sort photos by date and time, you can now display them by location or even place these photos on a map and hyperlink them, creating an interactive album of your travels. And, for even more possibilities, you can take geo-referencing technology several steps further with a new Windows Mobile device from Navman.

The old-fashioned method of geo-referencing

Until now, if users wanted to geo-reference photos, they had to carry a digital camera and an active GPS receiver, and then perform a number of additional steps after taking the picture. The process goes something like this:

• The user takes a photo with a digital camera, which automatically date and time stamps the saved image.
• The GPS receiver, which must be active during the photo shoot, records the path you travel during the shoot along with the date and time you passed each point in your travels and saves it as a file. This location/time record is known as the "GPS tracks."
• The user returns home and uses RoboGEO (http://www.robogeo.com) or a similar program to match the date/time stamp on the photos with the GPS tracks and inserts the correct longitude and latitude coordinates into each JPEG file. The GPS coordinates are saved in the JPEG's "EXIF header," which does not degrade the quality of the photo.
• Once the photos are geo-referenced, they can be used with a number of software applications and Web sites that support location-based photo information. (RoboGEO will help you export your photos to the popular Google Maps, Flikr, and Microsoft Streets & Trips.)