I've been waiting for consumer-grade easy-to-use GPS-enabled digital cameras to come out since handheld GPS units and digital cameras came out. It seemed like a natural match for documentation purposes, especially if there was a standard for tagging the data. Ricoh came out with the RDC-1700G, an expensive Japanese-only GPS camera last year, but now they've released the Caplio Pro G3, a much cheaper consumer model. It's still only for the Japanese market, but the fact that they made it based on a consumer platform is a good sign that it may be available elsewhere soon. I think that this will be a huge boon to the visual blogging world. I can see services that bring together photoblogging and Indy Junior to make something like GeoSnapper much more acessible. I'm looking foreward to using one, but I can also see the downside: it won't take long for someone to forget to remove the GPS metadata from some picture that really shouldn't have it and then get into trouble.
The next question: when is the GPS-camera-phone going to come out? It only makes sense (as it has for, gee, 5 years?) for these three handheld, plastic, personal information tools to be coupled. Merge the Caplio with the Danger Hiptop with some backend photo management software and you have a pretty serious tool for documenting the world in real time.
Posted by mikek at September 9, 2003 02:02 AMFound a place that appears to sell the Caplio Pro G3 to US markets:
http://us.yesasia.com/en/PrdDept.aspx/pid-1002869753/did-2886/code-c/section-electronics/
However, I'm still not ready to buy it, since it's so first generation.
Posted by: Mike at September 9, 2003 12:31 PMThey exist! Not to add further grist to the old myth of Japan being ahead of the curve, but they were rolling out just such beasties a few months ago.
One neat thing I saw was a locator that guided you to the nearest love hotels to your position. Very contextual!
Posted by: AG at September 10, 2003 05:56 AM