I added a bunch of bookmarks to my way-cool things on the internets directory this weekend. Specifically, photo sharing sites that enable you to add a location to where your photo was shot. Some digital cameras already do this if they have GPS technology, but since my camera doesn’t do that I will ignore all of those details until they become relevant and focus on the existing coolness available to me now.
SO, let’s begin with a great New York Times article about photo sharing sites going global. One of the features of the story is about a guy who checked out with his family for a year and took them on a trip around the world. They documented their trip and shared photos on a file sharing site called SmugMug. I know you’re probably not chomping at the bit to see a stranger’s vacation photos, but it does help illustrate how it works. Here’s the Higham photo album.
- SmugMug offers meeting planners the ability to create and manage password protected photo albums, enable attendees to purchase prints (you never know!) and, of course, have a platform to manage your own personal event portfolio.
- Panoramio lets you search for photos by location, using their World map or Google Earth. I love this because you can find beautiful images for your registration site and presentations and support both amateur and professional photographers (rather than cough up tons of cash to stock photo firms). Let’s just say we’re doing an event near Salzburg, Austria. Doesn’t the image below make you want to go?
- Zoom and Go is a young site that aims to combine video, photos and destination reviews from travelers. It has a way to go before it becomes a really useful tool for travel and meeting professionals, but it has a lot of promise. Here’s the page for London to give you an idea of what the site can do.
- Flickr is one of the biggest photo sharing sites where you can create albums and map your photos to each location. I just played around with our photos from Chicago, and used the Hybrid feature on Google Maps to find the exact building where the exhibit hall for EMS was located.
I’m sure there are dozens of other up and comers in this area, so if you’re using another site or using any of these for other planning/production purposes, let me know!
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