Mappr Interactive Demo
Mappr, a new photo-mapping site that uses the Flickr image-sharing infrastructure to display photo thumbnails on a map, has just made an interactive demo available. At this stage, it appears to be limited to showing subsets of a fixed set of photo collections (refreshed daily) on a state-level map of the U.S. However, the end result is something that performs with compelling smoothness on my old iBook. (Though it naturally bogs down a bit more as you hit the “Thank you sir, may I have another” button.) They claim to be determining the location based on place name heuristics in the photos’ tags (and possibly descriptions?). Note also the red “2″ in the screenshot above, which appears to be an aggregation indicator. I’ll be watching this one closely as they develop its capabilities further.
(Update) Unsurprisingly, free-text geocoding is fraught with peril:
