loc.alize.us: Geotag photos the old way… with Google Maps

Generally, I geotag my photos using Flickr's Organizr. Unfortunately, I often find Yahoo! Maps to be much worse than Google Maps and whilst recently tagging some photos of Northern France and Flanders, I simply found it intolerable (being unfamiliar with placenames etc). I began to reminisce about the days when geotagging was somewhat more complex and proceeded to search for the tool I used to use.

I stumbled across loc.alize.us. loc.alize.us is a bookmarklet and website which uses Google Maps for geotagging. It is remarkably simple to use and quite minimalist.

The bookmarklet works through going to one of your photos on Flickr, hitting the bookmarklet, searching for the location using Google Maps, clicking the location and pressing save. Pretty simple, if you ask me! I find this much quicker than Flickr's service and Google Maps, in my opinion, is much better than Yahoo! Maps.

Their website allows users to explore geotagged photographs, much like the explore option on Flickr's maps. Once again, the difference is primarily choice. It allows users to use Google Maps, which has much better satellite coverage for example, rather than Yahoo! Maps. Results, naturally, can be refined by user etc.

loc.alize.us allows its maps to be embedded into website. I question the practical uses of this, but it's still a good idea. I believe Flickr lacks this.

loc.alize.us doesn't offer anything important that Flickr doesn't. The key difference is the mapping site it uses; and that's one big difference!

Update: The service is still available online. It is now possible to use the bookmarklet as described in the article, or use copy and paste instead for geotagging. The website allows you to search for photos, tags and people and see the data on Google Maps instead of Yahoo's own mapping service.

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