The new web service Stolen Camera Finder uses this concept to locate photos on the Internet. You can upload a photo taken with a particular camera to the service’s website, or enter the camera’s serial number directly to start a search for photos on the web. The drag and drop upload is currently only working under Firefox and Google Chrome, if you use another browser you need to enter the camera’s serial number into the form.

This is quite problematic, considering that some camera models store an internal serial number in the EXIF tags that is different from the serial number shown on the camera itself. Tools to read EXIF information. Tools like Photo Me can be used to read the EXIF information from a photo taken with that camera.

The main idea behind the search is that the thief may have uploaded photos taken with the camera to the Internet, which would then open up possibilities to identify the person responsible for stealing the digital camera.

The service crawls the web for photos with serial numbers and adds all that are found to its database, which currently contains a list of well over one million serial numbers.

The serial number of the camera is then compared to the information stored in the database, with matches being reported to the user on site.

A match does not necessarily mean that the thief has uploaded photos to the web. It can very well be a photo that the original owner has uploaded to the Internet before the camera was stolen.

Users can fill out a missing camera report to receive email notifications whenever a new photo with the same serial number is added to the database.

The developers of Stolen Camera Finder have created a Google Chrome extension that anonymously submits information to the site if a JPG image is loaded that contains a serial number.

Another application, Flickr Scraper, is offered on site that scans the Flickr website for photos and submits the information to the project’s database.

The Stolen Camera Finder service adds another option for users who have lost their digital camera, or had it stolen. The biggest drawbacks currently are the small database size and the fact that several camera models do not save serial number information.

One tool that automates part of the process is AmoK Exif Sorter which was mentioned in the excellent Shell Extension City blog. You can add files and folders to the software and use part of the Exif data to rename the photo. The default output will use the data and time when the photo was taken as the filename.

This can be changed, various variables from the Exif information can be added and removed to create unique filenames. It is furthermore possible to add custom text as well. I usually rename on a folder by folder basis and add the country and town to the filename as well as the date and remove the time instead.

The Exif Sorter takes care of the folder structure as well, the default format is Year/Month/Day which can be customized as well. The filenames can be further customized in the options by selecting the separator and digit format for instance. Subfolders are processed by default which can be turned off.

The default language of the program is German which can be changed to English by clicking on Datei > Optionen. Just click on the pulldown menu named Sprache and select Englisch from the menu. All menu entries will be in English after the next restart.

AmoK Exif Sorter provides an excellent semi-automatic way of renaming image collections.

Only a few digital cameras support that the geolocation is automatically added to the Exif data of the picture, but don’t worry if your camera can’t do it automatically. Panorado Flyer makes it easy to edit the data and add the geolocation to the image. This is done by using Google Images to find the location that the image was taken and adding the coordinates found using the context menu.

I think that this is an excellent way to spice up those boring “we are back from holidays, take a look at all the pictures that we have taken” kind of events. This tool would be even nicer if it would be possible to create automatic slideshows showing the images and Google Earth locations and burn those information on a DVD to view on tv.