6 Months With Ipernity

So, it has been about six months since Flickr loved me so much that I had to leave for Ipernity. For the most part, it is a good alternative. It has many of the same features as Flickr, and one can post documents other than photos (though I primarily use it for photos, and will comment based on that), but there are some long-standing issues that I have that would make it so much better. I have brought most of these to the attention of Ipernity or the appropriate 3rd party developer, and hopefully someday they'll get fixed.

First, the good stuff:

* Works quite well as a photo sharing site. Great metadata support, commenting (and nested comments), search-ability, licensing options,
* No annoying animated gifs to invite your photos to groups.
* Well tuned in to the world outside the USA from the start.

The bad:
* No automatic geotagging on upload. If I have GPS EXIF metadata in my photos, they are not automatically placed on the map. I have asked about this, and was told it doesn't make sense to have automatic geotagging because it just adds too many points. Uh, why support it at all if you don't want us to have multiple points on the map??? This is my #1 gripe. Either support it or don't, don't wrap a lame excuse around a half-baked implementation!
* Ipernity supports additional metadata about your geo points. Click the little dot on the map, and you get more info in addition to the photo. It is cool, except that for some reason whenever I upload an image, and geotag it by hand, for some reason the location name and country are automatically filled in as France (yes, both of them) no matter where the photo was taken (or where it was slapped down on the map). This is such a simple thing! Use the IPTC location information already provided in the photo for this stuff. If it isn't there, just leave it blank! Or, if they want to get fancy, they could grab the location from the map and query the GeoNames database. It's free and creative commons licensed.

Update 21.12.2007: I uploaded some pictures with GPS metadata this morning, and after manually geotagging them, the location metadata showed up correctly - no longer is everything located in France! However, I have noticed that on the few older pictures I checked, which were right in the middle of Stuttgart, the location metadata says they are in Ghana, not Germany. Hmm...

* There is no batch editor for the location information I mention above. And one must be zoomed in quite close, and only in the geotagging part of the doc manager, before the option to edit it becomes available. Makes editing a lot of information a chore, so a lot of the time I don't even bother. Why not let me change it from the doc's "home" page"?

Update 21.12.2007:One can now edit location properties while zoomed out all the way (assuming the selected dot has only one location in it). A good start. Hopefully they'll address the other issues as well.

* Stop nagging me about not using Firefox in the DocManager. I know Firefox is great, but I chose to use OmniWeb instead. Along the same lines, when I am looking at geotagged photos, why do you insist on saying "the mini-map cannot be displayed in this browser", which is 100% false. When I change my browser identification to Firefox, it displays just fine. I know you are a small team and can't try it on everything out there, but why not give it a try? Most browsers out there are not that broken.

* This isn't Ipernity's fault, but there are no (that I know of) fun sites like Big Huge Labs' "Fd's Flickr Toys" for Ipernity.
* Again, not a fault of Ipernity, but the variety of upload tools is lacking. I really, really, like Connected Flow's "Flickr Export for Aperture" a plugin for Aperture that really makes it easy to upload photos from within my preferred photo management and editing software. Picturesync from uVerse is a decent stopgap measure, but it is an extra, clunky step along the way. And the interface, IMHO, is quite horrible. Maybe I just need to write the Aperture to Ipernity export plugin myself...

The Best Geotagging Solution Yet

Back in December, I talked about the attempt Jeannette and I were making on an elegant geotagging solution where the key components would come from our employer.

For various reasons, that project is on hold. But I still want to use the capabilities built into my camera to automatically geotag my photos, but I was not happy in Strasbourg and Barcelona carrying around the setup I had. (see below)



I have been yearning for a solution, and even tried out a few things (unsuccessfully). With the upcoming vacation season, the sense of urgency has increased, so I bit the bullet and invested in this:



The two small boxes replace the Nikon MC-35 cable, the 6-foot long GPS serial cable and the old & clunky Garmin GPS reciever.

The larger box is a Holux GPSlim 236 bluetooth GPS receiver and the smaller box is a bluetooth-to-serial converter doodad from Foolography that plugs into the camera's 10-pin accessory port. I don't think the creator has decided on a model number yet...

These two things completely eliminate the cable clutter. The only downside is the loss of the 10-pin connector for my remote release. But I am working on that...

So far this system has worked quite well, especially considering its small size. After extensive testing on our trip to Paris over the long Easter weekend, I can say I am quite happy. But there are some strange points I will bring up:
* The Bluetooth connection is flaky. Once the connection is made, it is pretty solid. I'd say about 66% of the time, the connection between the GPS and the module on the camera is made within a second or three of turning on the camera. About 25% of the time it will take much longer. Maybe 10 -15 seconds. The remaining 10% or so of the time it simply will not connect, and I have to switch off the camera and back on before the connection is made.
* The Bluetooth connection is much more reliable when I keep the GPS close to the camera. I had originally intended to keep the GPS unit in my backpack, but it was unreliable. Currently I have a cell-phone pouch (thank you Jeannette!) attached to my camera strap. Not perfect, but working acceptably well.
* The Holux GPSlim 236 battery life is incredible. I get at least 12 hours on a charge.
* The battery on the D200 is not seriously diminished, if I turn off the camera between bursts of shooting. Nikon made an interesting decision (or maybe it was just a mistake) to keep the exposure meter on when there is incoming GPS data. This means the camera is burning a lot more power than it does in its idle state when nothing is happening. The battery will die in a few hours if I don't turn the camera off. I think it is more the exposure meter remaining on than the Bluetooth-to-serial module.
* The Holux GPSlim 236 normally locks in pretty quickly (less than 1 minute), assuming I haven't moved a great distance since the last time it was on (and locked in). But sometimes, and I haven't figured out what causes this, it will take forever, like it is reading the entire almanac. It is very frustrating when the GPS doesn't lock in quickly, more so than when the Bluetooth connection isn't made.
* The Holux GPSlim 236 is very good (but not perfect) at keeping a lock in a city. It beats the heck out of my old Garmin, which is no surprise considering the Garmin is around 8 years older than the Holux. I think the quality of the position reported by the Holux is better too. Comparing geotagged photos with both GPS units using Google Maps, the Holux geotagged photos seem much closer to the right place than the Garmin. I really like that.