I’ve been interested in EXIF data for about 6 months. Every photo you take on many models of smart phones (iPhone, some Androids, etc.) is encoded with the latitude and longitude of where the photo was take. (Assuming you enable this at some point on your device; on the iphone it’s a pop-up that occurs when you launch the camera.)

Several sites, such as Posterous and Flickr, pull this data when you post photos but none were really processing and displaying the location data to my satisfaction.

So here’s what I’ve created:  a site that allows you to email in a photo, which then in turn posts that photo and checks you into Foursquare at the street address and intersection.  Photos for Foursquare.

Each photo is then posted to a page with a map and the message.  The text with URL is “shouted” to Foursquare.  If you have Twitter and Facebook defaulted on in your FourSquare settings it will also flow to those platforms.

So…head over to Photocheck.in

  1. Sign in with your FourSquare ID
  2. Retrieve your private email address on the Account page
  3. Start emailing in photos from your location-enabled mobile phone (iphones, Droids, etc.). We figure out location and “shout” the subject text of your email

Caveats:

  • The service seems to work best with iPhones and not at all with Blackberrys.  On Androids it’s not really tested.
  • You must have Twitter defaulted on in your FourSquare settings for the messages and links to be passed to Twitter.
  • This service was built for me by an elancer and is not even remotely stress tested.  By the time you read this post the site may have already blown up, and I might be trying to track down the aforementioned elancer or find a new contractor. (If you are interested in lending a coding hand with this project please contact me.)

Common Questions/Comments:

What’s the point of checking into a street address, why can’t it check me into a place.  How about returning nearby places and letting me select?

All the photo returns is a latitude and longitude that is reverse geocoded on the Google Maps API to get address.  You can’t infer place/restaurant/bar from a coordinate.  I could return place options, but I wanted this to be a single step service for posting photos and have the photo’s data do the work.  (If you selected from a menu of place options, the photo’s data would be unnecessary.)  It’s an EXIF experiment.

With that said, I’ve got some ideas on guessing location from the coordinate…maybe there’s a way to use the SocialGreat data to do that.  Also the Foursquare guys I’m hoping/guessing will be adding hyperlink support to the FourSquare app which will make the service more useful.

For now you just get a basic photo service for FourSquare that identifies address and calls shout commands.  You also get a nice roster of your Foursquare photos.  Mine are below or at this link.

Related articles by Zemanta