Photowhere

One problem with digital cameras is that they tend to name their pictures in a cryptic fashion (i.e. DSC0034.jpg).

To help users organize and retrieve digital photographs, a system has been developed, entitled PhotoWhere, which annotates digital photographs automatically with relevant keywords based on data from a GPS receiver and the World Wide Web.
Using a GPS receiver, the system tags each picture with the specific GPS coordinates where it was taken. The system then queries a geographical database that indexes web pages by GPS coordinates, which produces a set of web pages that are associated with these coordinates. Next, these web pages are analyzed using a combination of standard and unique information retrieval techniques in order to best determine what the web pages are about, or even better, what topics and keywords they have in common. From this information, an accurate annotation of about 5-10 relevant keywords is deduced. These keywords are presented to the user in real-time, right after s/he took the picture, thereby giving the user instantaneous information about the place where they are taking a picture. The keywords are also stored with the picture to facilitate keyword-based (and location-based) search and retrieval of pictures from a database.

Photowhere is Interactive Experience Group, MIT Media Labortary project. These people sure are helluva creative bunch!

Cheers!