One of the cool new features that I’ve been able to integrate into this site is the ability to automatically overlay the pictures I take onto Google Maps at the exact location they were taken. It’s a really cool feature and provides so much more value to the posts. At least I think so. So how is it done? Well let me share how I’ve done it here. I’m sure there are other ways to do it but this works for me.

If you have a camera phone, ( I have a Blackberry Storm) it may have the ability to embed the GPS  data right into the picture at the time you snap the picture. In my phone it is a feature that can be turned on or off. This makes it really easy and takes a few steps out of the process. If not you can use Google Earth to do the work for you. 

First I recommend that you install Picasa. This will let you create a master library of pictures and make managing the pictures easier. It aslo works in conjuction with Google Earth to do the geotagging of the GPS data to the picture itself. You can also make a webalbum as I have done here to post all of the photos in folders or "libraries" that you can share out.

Next install Google Earth. Google Earth is a really cool applcation that lets you zoom in on any area of the planet and do a lot of cool searches and so forth. It was a huge help for me to Geotag all the pictures I took last year.

Once you have everything installed and you open Picasa. select a picture that you want to Geotag. At the bottom you will see a Blue and white Geo-Tag Button.

Click it and Google Earth will open.

Zoom in on the location that you want to embed into the picture and Click the Geotag button. Then click Done.

Voila!  You have now embedded the GPS Location into the picture itself. As i mentioned above, if you have a camera phone that supports geotagging. This part will not even be necessary. The work will have been done automatically. But, chances are your regurlar digital camera, won’t make it that easy.

Well here it is…… the re-launch of the Ride with Joe website. It is still much a work in progress but I think those of you that had followed my adventure last year will find this much easier to navigate and follow. I learned a lot about what was good and also what wasn’t so good about the last site. I’ve also been researching blogs and “social networking” quite a bit. I’ve built in some pretty nifty functionality. into this site so I hope everyone enjoys it. 

Some current features:

• No need to create an account to post comments
• Sidebar map showing Joe’s last reported locations. If you click the map it shows a larger map with a trail.
• Geotagged pictures. This means all the pictures appear in a google map showing where the photo was taken.
• Share links at the bottoms of each post to make it easier to share individual posts with friends.
• Posts are sorted by categories to make it easier to seach and find the ones you like.
• RSS feed support so that you can get updates of posts without haveing emails being sent constantly.
• Twitter integration so you can “tweet” Joe

The original site was hosted at travelpod.com. It is still there but I have migrated every entry and photo to this site. You can read (or re-read) those entries by clicking the Ride with Joe 2008 link on the top menubar. I’ve Geotagged all the pictures and they get overlayed on Google Maps like all the new entries will going forward.

 Starting out it will be just me here for the most part. I am open to expanding the Blog to other interested contributors. If you are interested, drop me a line on my Contact page. If there are events, products or other interesting items you would like me to feature, feel free to let me know as well. This is just the start of something much bigger that I have planned. Stay tuned!

Rock on!

Joe