Map my vacation, please?

If someone wants to make a useful “Web 2.0” application I’ve got a cool idea for you. Make it really easy for me to map my trip route, then with drag-and-drop ease place my Flickr photos on the map, add notes, and save the map in a re-usable format (KML, I guess). As a ‘++’ make it easy for me to review stuff along the way. Oh, and make each component in decomposable, clean re-usable formats (atom, kml, hReview, etc).

I just got home from a week long vacation with Ashby and Tara. Of course, we took photos the whole time. Every day I shot a dozen or so photos to Flickr and Facebook from my iPhone. I was moblogging so much in fact that Brett sent me this hilarious plea for assistance in makinig my moblogging less noisy in Facebook. He said he loved me, but I had turned his Facebook into the Fulkersonbook. Check out Brett’s Facebook news view:

OMFG, ridiculous. I thought Facebook provided a digest of these things! Apparently adjusting the Notes feed slider in facebook doesn’t effect the mobile notes. Facebook needs to fix this. Anyway, I felt like a spammer. I’m shocked no one else has complained. I suspect you’ve all just blacklisted me. 😉 Well, I couldn’t figure out a way to prevent my moblogging from being so noisy so I cut back on moblogging to facebook and now I shoot most of my photos to Flickr only. Back to my cool idea.

Prior to leaving for my vacation I mapped the route. Along the route I shot photos using my digital camera and my iPhone. The latter, as mentioned, I sent directly to Flickr and Facebook with the occasional note. The bulk of the photos didn’t get uploaded until I got home. Upon my return I wanted to blog about the trip and I thought a cool thing would be to provide a map with:

• trip route
• replete with geotagged photos
• , notes
• and maybe even some reviews.

We packed groceries and didn’t eat out much, but it would be cool if I had provided the occasional hReview of the few restaurants we did stop in as well as of the campground we split from in favor of a crappy motel room that had a great view in Morro Bay. If it were easy to generate hReviews I would do it more often. Especially if I could do it on the spot.

One could fulfill my dream by mashing a few services from different providers. Google Mapes, Flickr, Big Tribe… By providing some connective tissue it shouldn’t be too hard to come up with something really useful. All weekend I’ve scoured the Internet for an easy way to do this and every service I’ve found either doesn’t meet the aforementioned requirements or is too time consuming. What I found was that Greasemonkey scripts can make geotagging photos easier, but I can not find a way to easily map photos, with notes, and route. I think I found a way to do this by paying, but this service was borderline unusable, and I’m still not clear how easy it was to map routes, or if I could. I also had to re-upload my photos instead of using those on Flickr. Lame. Also, there was a fee and I’m not going to pay until I know it works. Then I might pay Flickr prices. Other alternatives didn’t allow me to display only my stuff and again routes were an issue. The only option that did allow me to do everything I wanted, I think, was such a pain the ass I’m not going to do it. It involved Greasemonkey scripts, Google Earth, and some serious hackery. I don’t have time for that!

Optimally I would have a service that I could use to map my trip. While traveling I could map photos based on my location. Use a mobile app for creating reviews along the way; otherwise I probably won’t review. And then I could polish it all off with additional photos when I get home. This would be killer, right?

Dopplr or some of these other travel services should implement this. I would then actually want to use the service. Currently I can’t possibly muster the time or energy to waste. Mind you, I’m the target audience for services like this being I typically travel a couple times a month for work.

Oh, here’s my vacation photos. I suspect this blog post is the closest I’m going to come to realizing my dream of a digital vacation scrap book with a map interface. 😦