{This page needs work - module missing to display map.}

Geolocation is a fascinating thing.  Especially for a guy that is continually irritated by the fact that geographical location of the greater majority of web content is defined no more accurately than "somewhere in the world".  As an aside, you will notice that very little effort is required to discover where this web site is centered.

It took a rather large amount of effort to figure out how to get the demo Google map below working.  As usual, documentation is aweful.  Written by people who know exactly how it all works but kind of neglect to tell anyone else.... like those of us that need to refer to the documentation.  Nevertheless, the coding efforts of these plugin developers is very much appreciated.

Note that all of this took place on my Ubuntu Karmic (9.10) version of Debian Linux, Apache2 web server and WordPress 2.9 with WP plugins XML Google Maps 1.12.1 and NextGEN Gallery 1.4.3.

First thing.  Images have to be geotagged.  I installed ExifTool

dennis@DML-DELL-Desk910:~/$ sudo apt-get install libimage-exiftool-perl

on my Ubuntu box (of course, Synaptic can do the job too) so I could easily see what headers my images contain by typing in a terminal (see example output below)

dennis@DML-DELL-Desk910:~/$ exiftool filename.jpg

To do the actual geotagging, I downloaded Geotag, which GUIfies ExifTool.  This is a java executable that requires no installation.  Just save it somewhere and run with OpenJDK Java 6 Runtime (for me, this is a right click on the geotag-nnn.jar file in Nautilus).  The best place I found to get coordinates for existing images is Google Earth.  In future, I will carry my GPS and make sure GPS and camera times are synchronised.

After many hours of failing to get the specified NextGEN gallery to show up in the map below, I finally decided to try converting my GPX format file to KML.  This was a bit of a pain in the ass as I have become quite proficient at writing GPX format manually but have no clue how to write KML syntax.  Nevertheless, a quick search about and I found GPS Visualizer, which will quite efficiently convert a GPX file you upload to KML.

[xmlgm {http://dmlinton.net/wp-content/uploads/file/lotcornerstrk.kml} ngg_gallery=1]

Here is the output from running exiftool on the photo in the map above:

dennis@DML-DELL-Desk910:~/tmp$ exiftool dml-jd40c.jpeg
ExifTool Version Number         : 7.82
File Name                       : dml-jd40c.jpeg
Directory                       : .
File Size                       : 71 kB
File Modification Date/Time     : 2010:02:23 17:32:00-05:00
File Type                       : JPEG
MIME Type                       : image/jpeg
JFIF Version                    : 1.01
Exif Byte Order                 : Little-endian (Intel, II)
Make                            : HTC
Camera Model Name               : HTC-Touch
X Resolution                    : 72
Y Resolution                    : 72
Resolution Unit                 : inches
Modify Date                     : 2009:08:22 13:01:08
Artist                          : Dennis M. Linton, P.Eng.
Exif Version                    : 0210
Date/Time Original              : 2009:08:03 13:27:29
Create Date                     : 2009:08:03 13:27:29
Flash                           : No Flash
Color Space                     : Uncalibrated
Exif Image Width                : 320
Exif Image Height               : 240
GPS Version ID                  : 2.2.0.0
GPS Latitude Ref                : North
GPS Longitude Ref               : West
GPS Altitude Ref                : Above Sea Level
GPS Time Stamp                  : 17:27:29
GPS Img Direction Ref           : True North
GPS Img Direction               : 270
GPS Map Datum                   : WGS-84
GPS Date Stamp                  : 2009:08:03
Current IPTC Digest             : cbed06fb525cb252a8fb214c2de53b0d
City                            : Madoc
Province-State                  : Ontario
Country-Primary Location Name   : Canada
Application Record Version      : 4
Image Width                     : 320
Image Height                    : 240
Encoding Process                : Baseline DCT, Huffman coding
Bits Per Sample                 : 8
Color Components                : 3
Y Cb Cr Sub Sampling            : YCbCr4:2:0 (2 2)
GPS Altitude                    : 170 m Above Sea Level
GPS Date/Time                   : 2009:08:03 17:27:29Z
GPS Latitude                    : 44 deg 29' 56.03" N
GPS Longitude                   : 77 deg 28' 16.80" W
GPS Position                    : 44 deg 29' 56.03" N, 77 deg 28' 16.80" W
Image Size                      : 320x240