The Dilbert Blog: Invent This Product

Sigh, too bad I had to mothball Virgil due to lack of interest inside HP. Now even Scott Adams is asking for this!

The Dilbert Blog: Invent This Product:

Invent This Product I’d love to have a complete scrapbook of all my vacations, but it’s too much work. That’s why I need a service that would create the scrapbook automatically, online.

Here’s how it could work. First, my digital camera should have GPS so it always knows where I am. When I download my photos, a Google map would pop up, and the photos would go into storage according to the points on the map where the pictures were taken, ordered by date. The map forms the backdrop for organizing the scrapbook.

...

Everything Scott goes on to ask for was under consideration to be included in Virgil, which I began working on about 7 years ago. The project has been inactive the last two years, I just had to give up due to lack of uptake by HP product divisions, and start working on The Next Big Thing. The good news is that Yahoo and Google are continuing to drive geotagging services and applications, and this vision is coming together gradually.

I think Yahoo! is outrunning everyone in this space, but I am growing impatient with their slooooow progress pulling it all together. But I empathize with their Big Company challenges, which I'm sure play a part in that. Here are a few Yahoo-ish places for the interested to begin:

The Flickr World Map Flickr's geo features kick ass.
Yahoo Trip Planner So much potential in this app, c'mon, work it Yahoo!
ZoneTag If you're a mobile user, you'll like this.
TagMaps Killer tech here, c'mon Yahoo, use it!
Dan Catt's Geobloggers site Stop teasing and tell us what you're doing.

For a dark horse in this space, head on over to Slovenia for a look at TripTracker.