Not too long ago now, I created an account on Flickr to store all of The Vicarious Crew’s photos. Flickr, as you all know, is an excellent way to share photos online with friends, family, and everyone else out there in Internet land. Allowing you to group photos, add notes, comment on photos, and many more features has made Flickr one very hot item.

There was something else that I wanted to do for the site though, and that was, create a map. Not just a flat boring map outlining where we’re going. I wanted a completely dynamic map that would show all of the photos that have been added to The Vicarious Crew’s Flickr photoset. That way, visitors can see exactly where photos were taken.

I had no idea how to go about doing this, as I didn’t even know anything about how to implement a map on a website in the first place. All I had was my Flickr account. With a variety of sites out there including Google Maps and Yahoo! Maps (Beta), Google Maps appeared to be the most commonly used, so I opted to go for that.

After signing up for both a Google Maps API and a Flickr API, I then spent a few hours researching the web looking for ways to put the two together. I finally came across a blog post on John Nunemaker’s website, Addicted To New. The post was titled “Geophotos with Flickr and Google Maps”.

What I had found, was exactly was I was looking for. Available for download at John’s site is the Addicted To Flickr PHP class. As John states on his site, “I know nothing about licenses and don’t really care to. Use this however you want…”, so proceed at your own will. I quoted a paragraph from his site as well to give you a brief overview of what exactly this does:

All you need to show things with the Google Maps API is the longitude and latitude coordinates. All you need to find similar photos on Flickr is a tag. Put the two together and you simply have to tag a Flickr photo with a similar tag and the longitude and latitude coordinates and you have geophoto.

Ok, so, I now had my Flickr API and photoset, my Google Maps API along with the XHTML markup that Google provides, and Addicted To Flickr. The next step was to figure out how I was going to tag my photos with the right latitude and longitude coordinates. To make a photo appear on the map, you need to give it three tags… “geophoto” (which I changed to “geotagged”), geo:lat=[the_latitude], geo:long=[the_longitude].

There are a few different ways to achieve this. The first I found was a greasemonkey script provieded by Excellatronic Communications. If you already have greasemonkey installed (FireFox) then all you need to do is install the user scripts for this to work. This almost worked for me, but alas, it didn’t come through 100%. So being as impatient as I was, I continued my search.

The next process that I found is currently the one I am using right now. It’s called Flickrmap. What it allows you to do is, if you have Google Earth you can go to the exact point at which you want to get the lat/long coordinates from and Flickrmap will appy those coordinates as tags to any Flickr photo that you tell it, along with the third tag “geotagged”. Bam. Done. Easy.

Anyway, after I tagged my photos and added my Flickr user ID to the PHP class, it pretty much just started working. I spent most of my time customizing everying and going though all the lines of PHP to see what was going on.

So there you have it. It may sound like a lot, but you could have it all up and going in less than an hour if you have everything you need. In summary, if you would like to have a Google Map on your site that displays photos from a specific Flickr photoset, just follow these steps:

1. Get yourself a Flickr account if you don’t already have one.
2. Apply for a Flickr API.
3. Take note of your Flickr user ID. You can get it by looking at the URL of one of your photos while you are logged out (ex: http://www.flickr.com/photos/userID/photoNumber/).
4. Sign up for a Google Maps API (note, you need an existing GMail account to apply).
5. Go to Addictedtonew.com and download Addicted To Flickr.
6. Add your Flickr API and user ID to the PHP class in Addicted To Flickr.
7. Add the script for your Google Maps API into the main PHP file that builds the map.
8. Add three tags to each of the photos in your photoset that you want to appear on the map with Flickrmap or Excellatronic Communications’s greasemonkey scripts .
9. Voala! You have a completely dynamic map that automatically creates markers for each Flickr photo you have tagged with the three essential tags. Every new photo you tag automatically appears on your map.

The Vicarious Crew’s map currently only has a couple of photos as the trek is yet to begin. After June 1st, the photos will begin to appear, so keep and eye on it.

To ensure that every experience The Vicarious Crew encounters is captured to perfection, I have decided to upgrade my digital camera to the Canon Digital Rebel XT.

My very first digital camera which I used got almost two years ago (and still have) was an Olympus Stylus 410 point-and-shoot. It was the perfect little camera for a newcomer to the digital photography age such as myself. Its all-weather endurance and compact size made it perfect for the many weekend ski trips.

But alas, I found myself getting more frustrated with the camera than originally intended, as I tend to use a camera for more than general purpose shooting of mountains and people. Unless I used the general setting and flash or attempted to take a photo outside on a sunny day, I wasn’t going to get a clear photo. I found myself taking three to even five photos of every subject to ensure that at least one would process to my satisfaction.

Regardless, I have found what I was now looking for. A camera that would guarantee quality and would allow me to unleash my creative side, a side that the Olympus never allowed me to release without great care being taken. The last SLR I had requiered me to load film into it, but not this one.

A friend of mine who also happens to be a photographer directed me towards the Rebel XT. I won’t get into detail about the camera at this point in time, but I will say that I am eager and ready to get on this trip so I can start taking some great photos. I am a writer for Reading 4 New Times Magazine, so stay tuned to that for my complete review of the Rebel XT.

Remember, some key photos that we take on the trip will be posted here and also added to our Flickr photoset so you can see what we’re doing.

Need maps? The best place to pick up some maps is from your local Canadian Automobile Association (CAA) branch. If you live in the United States, then I believe it’s the American Automobile Association (AAA). For us here in Calgary, I just went and checked out the Alberta Motor Association (AMA).

Anyway, if you have a membership, you can get lots of free maps. I got a map for every state in the United States. They also have camping booklets called, amazingly enough, CampBooks. These show campgrounds all over different areas and also show you which are CAA approved. Which is good, because anywhere we can score a discount is a bonus in our books.

With all these maps, the possibility of us getting lost should be completly obliterated. We’ll see how that works out. Only 22 more days to go!

Accomodations are going to be important on a long trip. We plan to camp in national and state parks along the way, but what if we’re in the middle of a major metropolis? We can’t exactly set up a tent on the street.

Or can we?

I was just browsing The Cool Hunter and read their post entitled “101 Uses For A Parking Space”. It appears that a designer in Brooklyn, NY by the name of Michael Rakowitz has come up with the perfect solution. It’s called the P(Lot). Anyone who so chooses can rent the space provided with the car shaped tent, paying their fees into the meter. Don’t like the wagon? Rakowitz’s car cover canvasses are available in five different cover shapes, including a sedan, a Porsche, and a motorcycle.

I only have one problem with these… safety. I don’t think I could snuggle myself into one of these things knowing that cars are whizzing by only a few feet away, with me being completely blind to their location. Yeah, I think I’ll stick to toughing it out on a park bench and hope I don’t get arrested. Heh… just kidding of course.

In an attempt to make this site more user friendly, I’ve installed a new WordPress plugin called SimpleTags. Originally inspired by TechnoTag, SimpleTags is a plugin for WordPress that allows you to easily generate Technorati tags at the bottom of each blog entry. Those tags are then linked to Technorati. To create a tag you simply wrap a word that you want to be listed as a tag with [tag ]word[ /tag]. Note that you don’t use spaces. I only did so that “word” wouldn’t be seen as a tag in my example. It’s pretty neat and I’m hoping it helps with the usability of the site as well as making it a little more search engine friendly. You can see the new tags in action at the bottom of this post.

Also, as you have probably all noticed already, I have changed the layout from two columns to three columns. I’ve added a few elements to the site to help make it easier for readers to search through posts and find out what the latest posts are. I really like the WordPress Calendar and I think it will be a nice touch. Basically, the goal was to decrease the length of a single left column. I added a right-hand column to accomodate sponsors and advertisements. We’ll see if the changes turn out to be an improvement or not.

Pay attention, because more new features are going to be popping up in the next little while as well. And I’m going to try much harder to post a little more often than I currently am pre-leave of the trip. AND, I’ll see if I can’t get Chris and Kelly to do the same.