Just thinking out loud here, but are we using our
photographs in Commons to maximum advantage?
User:Para has also created something
that works with Google Earth,
which I haven't yet tried out:
http://tools.wikimedia.de/~para/GeoCommons/
People, take a look at the screenshot at
<http://tools.wikimedia.de/~para/GeoCommons/GeoCommons.jpg> to see
what's available right now.
That is very cool. It's very close to what I was imagining as the best-case scenario.
Showing both the heading, as well as the position that the image was taken from, is
great.
I also really like that's displaying live data. For example, I uploaded
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Taronga-Zoo-before-bird-show-pano.j… with
co-ordinates, then 60 seconds later went to the
specified co-ordinates in Google Earth, and there it was!
My two "... and a pony" blue-sky wishlist items would be:
* Running in Google Maps as well, not only Google Earth. (Don't get me wrong - I think
Google Earth is fantastic, but it is a
barrier to entry - almost everyone has a browser installed that'll run Google Maps,
but far fewer people have Google Earth
installed, plus want to fire-up a separate app). I'm not certain, but I'm guessing
that
http://tools.wikimedia.de/~dschwen/commons_geo/map.html is not using Google Maps (e.g.
double-clicking doesn't zoom in or centre the
map, rolling the mouse wheel does zoom in or out, and the tile set doesn't look
familiar)
* Ability to write, not just read:
** Use-case #1: Ability to drag an image from some list of thumbnail images (e.g.
"all photos I have uploaded that don't have
geotags"), and drop it straight onto the map, at the correct position, and have it
place a Commons marker at the drop point. Maybe
the marker could then be twisted / reoriented somehow to indicate the direction that
camera was facing when the picture was taken.
Changes get written back to Commons.
** Use-case #2: See an image that someone else has placed, and think it's close, but
not exactly in the right place. Click on it,
drag it, drop it in correct place, changes get written back to Commons.
If both of the above existed, then it might be feasible to give people the option of
marking where their photo was taken on a map,
straight after they have uploaded them - which has got to be the ideal, because the best
person to know where a photo was taken is
the person who took it.
Anyway, there's a trivial canned mock-up, very crude and totally non-dynamic, which
does nothing, apart from having a single
hard-coded clickable & draggable image, at
http://maps.nickj.org/
-- All the best,
Nick.