Comments on: What I’ve been working on: MapMyPix

By: Flex-info.fr : Communauté Flex » Blog Archive » Application GPS - Photos

Sat, 20 Oct 2007 00:53:01 +0000

[...] http://dougmccune.com/blog/2007/10/08/what-ive-been-working-on-mapmypix/ aucun [...]

By: d.c.Holth » Blog Archive » MapMyPix. The best photo geocoder ever.

d.c.Holth » Blog Archive » MapMyPix. The best photo geocoder ever. — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 14:15:08 +0000

[...] Since it has been a while since I posted last, I wanted to write a long detailed entry about MapMyPix and how sweet it is, but Doug McCune and Tom Link beat me to the punch! I suggest you check out their blogs for more information on this awesome combination of technology and our first experience developing on AIR.I was brought on to the project because of my experience working with Flickr. Uploading, downloading and managing the photos online became my primary responsibility on the project. I didn’t use the classes I had previously written for this project however. [...]

By: Jonas

Jonas — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 16:19:40 +0000

There are also potential applications for environmental consultant types for vegetation monitoring and surveys, though we are usually using commercial grade units that don’t utilize the .gpx file type. Would be great for municipalities mapping trees, signs, or anything else where knowing the rough location as well as the condition of the object is important, but sub-meter accuracy is not necessary.

Would be perfect to map the photos on a canoe trip down the Suwanee River in December. You interested or what? Jambo and Terry are making some noise like they might make the trek to Florida. It will be a good time. Let me know.

By: Doug

Doug — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 15:27:43 +0000

@Todd - we make heavy use of the EXIF thumbnails. All thumbnails shown in the application on the map are the extracted EXIF thumbnails (and if not available we save our own thumbnail). The problem came when we wanted to let people view the full resolution image (which you can do if you select an individual image on the map). Then you can navigate between the other images and view any of those in hi-res mode. It was when were were loading these full size images that we ran into memory problems.

And we’re doing a similar thing that it sounds like you’re doing to save our own thumbnails if no EXIF thumb is available, which is to set up a queue of image resizing processes and run one after the other, making sure to dispose of bitmapData objects, etc.

By: Todd P

Todd P — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 15:18:15 +0000

You guys might want to look into using the EXIF embedded JPEG thumbnails that most modern digital cameras use. Kevin Hoyt’s blog has an interesting article on this:

http://blog.kevinhoyt.org/2007/07/06/exif-thumbnails-and-the-air-bus-tour/
http://blog.kevinhoyt.org/2005/11/01/actionscript-3-meets-exif-21

I met him at the Adobe OnAir tour in Boston and was talking strategies with him about building thumbnails from large JPEG files, and he pointed me to the embeded thumbnai stuff.

I have an Air application that scans a directory of images and makes thumbnails out of them. I haven’t really run into any memory issues. I going through great pains, though, to call dispose on Bitmapdata.dispose, and try to reuse image resources. And since the asyncronous nature of Flex/AIR, I had to go through great pains to link events in a specific order as to only process a single image at a time.

By: derrick

derrick — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 06:20:04 +0000

Sounds similar to what http://www.everytrail.com does. They use timestamp geotagging too. It’s a nice site with many worldwide GPS routes and geotagged photos.

By: Doug

Doug — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 03:25:25 +0000

@PaulH - the app shouldn’t be limited to the US only, it should work worldwide, but MapQuest’s service only provides tiles for a limited subset of the world at the moment. I know they just added New Zealand recently, and we’ve tried the app with a data set there (actually, some of the screenshots I posted are showing New Zealand). When you load your GPX file, does it display the route as a red line and just not show the map? If so that means that MapQuest doesn’t yet support that area with their API. It’s a new APi so I think they’re rolling out worldwide support for map tiles as they go.

I’m also heavily involved right now in a Flex project using ESRI’s API. There are things I like about both APIs, interesting that you would say that neither is as good as googles. From an API standpoint what does google have that the others don’t?

By: PaulH

PaulH — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 03:16:23 +0000

esri’s APIs are always a bit quirky but their support for aws flex is actually pretty good so far. esri’s data outside the US is quite a bit better than mapquest’s. they also have a “free” public webservice. neither is as good as google’s–google’s negative is their localization, we’re building a flex app right now with global sample data & while thai users are very happy to see thai language vector maps they’re not so happy to see japanese language ones.

btw you guys never heard of scalebars or north arrows

in any case, is this app US-only? i tried dragging a GPX file from my bike riding NE of bangkok & got no joy.

By: Doug

Doug — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 01:14:01 +0000

@shaun - The app compares timestamps of when the photo was taken against the GPS track points (which have timestamps as well). It finds the closest track point, and assuming it’s within an acceptable range in time it places the photo at that point on the map.

By: shaun

shaun — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 01:08:15 +0000

Sorry I should have looked at Toms blog before posting. cheers,