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Summer: Time to Travel Reminisce

Summer is here. Summer holidays are just around the corner. This is the time of year when many of us usually plan to travel and explore the world. Not so this year.

Explore. Reminisce. Show

This year we can reminisce about past travels and adventures. This summer we can dig into our well-organized photo collections. Photos organized by location now allow us to virtually jump around the globe and through time. We can explore photos in Google Earth to feel teleported to places we had the luck to visit. With photos pinned to precise map locations, we can retrace our steps in Google Maps. Nothing refreshes the memory like photos combined with the aerial views that reveal how the individual pictures connect.

Photos on Google Maps
Photos on Google Maps: Visit to Taj Mahal

Continue reading Summer: Time to Travel Reminisce

HoudahGeo 6.0 Video Tutorial

Todd Olthoff of ScreenCastsOnline takes you on a tour of HoudahGeo 6.

HoudahGeo 6 is an application packed with features to help geocode and add metadata to your photos. With its simple steps of Load, Process, and Output; with all of the features packed in each of these steps HoudahGeo is the application that could start your entire photo workflow and it is the first application that launches when I load my photos to make sure I have all of the metadata embedded in the images themselves so that that data will follow the photo into any photo management application I choose to use.

Todd walks you through the various ways to get photos into HoudahGeo and then covers all of the steps from geocoding, over exporting metadata, to sharing and publishing. Todd does an excellent job describing the many features and finer details. We recommend all HoudahGeo users watch this tutorial.

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Photos & Track Log: Documenting an 8-day Kilimanjaro Trek

We’ve been dreaming about trekking to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro for quite some time. Last October, we finally made the trip. Climbing Africa’s highest mountain, crossing its different climatic zones and finally reaching the summit was an amazing once-in-a-lifetime experience. We documented this unique vacation by taking hundreds of photos – and by recording a track log.

Snow-covered peak of Mount Kilimanjaro
Looking through rainforest foliage at the snow-covered peak of Mount Kilimanjaro

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Create Custom KML Templates for Google Earth Export

When you export your photos for viewing in Google Earth or Google Maps, HoudahGeo creates a KML file from one of two templates: “Default” or “Extended Track Info”. The later includes more details and thus produces larger files. This makes the “Default” template the better choice for use with Google Maps.

There are occasions where you may want to customize these templates:

  • Modify the appearance or contents of the photo “balloons”
  • Modify the appearance of the track logs or photo pins
  • Change the Places folder structure within the KML file
  • Add your own branding or contact information

Please note that KML template customization is not an official feature of HoudahGeo 5. It is very much a work in progress and still has rough edges. Moreover, the template system is subject to changes. The intrepid may read on and learn how to create custom templates for KML output in HoudahGeo.

You will need a basic understanding of HTML, XML, the Google Earth Keyhole Markup Language as well as the Mustache template system.

Please let us know if you use custom KML templates. But do understand that we cannot provide support for template customization. Malformed templates may produce unexpected results or cause HoudahGeo or Google Earth to crash.

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Export Geotagged Photos for Viewing in Google Earth

Google Earth can be a great tool to explore – and show off – your photos: as “balloons” pinned to the locations where they were taken. Add a GPS track log and you get a bird’s eye view of your trip and the spots where you stopped to take photos.

Photo viewing in Google Earth is not limited to holiday snapshots. A real estate agent, for example, can create a Google Earth file with photos of a particular property. Buyers can download this file. It lets them explore the property and neighborhood – and see the exact vantage points from where the photos were taken.

Google Earth: Leopard in a tree
Google Earth: Leopard in a tree

With HoudahGeo, it is easy to prepare your geotagged photos and GPS track logs for viewing in Google Earth. Continue reading Export Geotagged Photos for Viewing in Google Earth

View your photos in Google Earth

Geocoding photos serves two main purposes:

  • Geotags provide extra information that can be used to catalog and find photos. Years from now, you may not remember when you took the photo you are looking for. But you will remember roughly where you took it
  • Geotags add to the “story” of a photo. With the photo pinned to a map, you can see the exact spot where it was taken. Add a GPS track log to see how you got there

One way to view and show geotagged photos is to create a Google Earth file with both the photos and the GPS track log. Now you have a bird’s eye view of your trip and the spots where you stopped to take photos.

Kenya Safari Continue reading View your photos in Google Earth