MOBILE TRAVEL BLOG

geotagged picture map

I've recently stumbled across a much better geotagged picture map and you can see how here HAPPYTIMEBLOG

How to make an S60 Nokia powered travel blog with Geo-tagging and Picasa web abd Facebook intergration...

Here's a step by step guide of how to make the BEST travel blog ever for FREE!

The idea started because I wanted to be able to keep in touch with everyone back home including those family members and friends who can barely even turn on a computer, but I also wanted it to be simple for me to update and not be spending hours on end in internet cafés.

Many travelers keep a journal on their travels and I didn't want to waste time writing in a journal, uploading pictures, writing countless generic emails and sending hundreds of postcards... So I settled on a travel blog,
One website address for everyone to check up on and see all my posts and pictures.
It doubles as my journal.
It gives me one place for all my blog posts, pictures and videos in case my camera is lost or stolen.

A basic travel blog is simple enough to set up but I wanted MUCH MUCH more from mine...
I wanted;

• A blog for daily entries.

• A picture gallery.

• A map showing where we have been with some of our pictures pinned to it.

• A page for videos we want to share.

• Auto updating of posts to my Facebook profile.

And I wanted to run it all independently from a computer, on my S60 Nokia N95.

I couldn't find anywhere that satisfied my needs so I made my own... Check it out... HAPPYTIMEBLOG The best travel blog on the web!

INGREDIENTS...
Hardware:

• Nokia N95 (any new nokia should do the job but you need a GPS enabled one or an external Nokia GPS reciever)
• Nokia Bluetooth SU-8W wireless keyboard (optional)

Web based accounts:

• A Blog ( I use Typepad but any Atom-enabled blog will do, like: Lifelogger, Livejournal and Life Type etc... )
• Picasa Web Albums.
• Facebook.

Software for S60 phones:

• Nokia Lifeblog (should be pre-installed on most Nokia phones but there is also other mobile blogging software)
  
• Nokia Location Tagger

IMPORTANT NOTE! I have been using this system for 6 months now and it knocks socks off anything I have seen other travelers using, best of all there is bags of free WiFi knocking about these days and every program I use in my system can do what it needs to over a WiFi connection! it costs me litterally nothing to keep my blog updated...

STEP 1) SETTING UP THE BLOG AND OTHER WEBSITES. 

BLOG:

Most blog sites are super simple and pretty fool-proof to set up, regardless of that I will go through setting up a Typepad account...

1. Go to www.typepad.com
2. Click on the "Sign up now" link
3. Fill in your  details and  click the "create your account" link

And wa-la you have your very own blog. You can customize the design and look to suit your needs pretty easily and then its on to the good stuff...

PICASA WEB ALBUMS:

I use Picasa Web Albums because it has the best and easiest setup and it also gives the best Geo-feed for a Geo-tagged picture map, Flickr for instance only feeds 50 pictures maximun...

1. Go to www.picasaweb.google.com
2. Sign up for a free account
3. Click on the "upload" button and then "create a new album". Call the new album Map Photos or something along those lines and upload a few pictures to check everything is working.
4. Next click on "view my public gallery" then in the address bar at the top you will have an address like this...     http://picasaweb.google.com/your username. Copy that link as it is the link for your Picasa Web Album, Now on your Typepad homepage click on the "TypeLists" tab, "create a new TypeList" select "Links" from the menu and name the list... something like Picture album or whatever you fancy... In the "quick add" box paste your Album Link into the box and click "Go". Fill in the Title and Notes fields and click "save". Next select the "publish"Save changes". Now you will have a link tour Picasa web albums in the sidebar of your Blog.  tab and check the box next to your blog and click "

STEP 2) SETTING UP THE PHONE.

Firstly you need to configure Nokia Lifeblog then download and install the needed software...

Nokia Lifeblog:

This application comes pre-installed on most Nokia Phones and I have found that it works really well. To set it up so you can post to your blog you need to:

Go to Options > Settings > Weblog Settings

 

Here you will set your TypePad log in information, the server address, and your Internet Access Point. There is also an option to optimize images posted to your TypePad blog.
The server address is http://www.typepad.com/t/atom/weblog

Select the proper Internet Access Point. Use the Internet GPRS access point or a WiFi access point, not an MMS or WAP GPRS access point.
After setting your configuration, go to "Done."

Open an image, text or video file in the Lifeblog application.
Then go to Options > Post to Web.

From there, you can select the blog on your account you want to post to, set a title for the post, and insert body text.

When your post is ready, go to Options > Send, this will send your post to your TypePad blog.

To install the applications to your phone it is best to use Nokia PC Suite.

1. Go to http://www.nokia.co.uk/A4630250 and download the version that suits your phone, follow the instructions and save it to your computer.

Next you need to download the programs:

Nokia Location Tagger:

This application tags the pictures you take with their latitude and longitude co-ordinates so that Picasa Web Albums can automatically pin them on a map.

1. Go to http://www.nokia.com/betalabs/locationtagger
2. Download the ".sis" and save it to your computer.
3. Open Nokia PC Suite and select "Install applications to phone"
4. Select the location tagger .sis file and install to phone memory.
5. Open Location Tagger, on the "Main" tab click options > settings 

 

for best results  turn the "GPS timeout" up full to 15 minutes and turn "Auto start" on the other options are up to you. I personally have "display notifications" set to off and "rename tagged file" set to on

Now your all set to Geo-Tag your pictures, Start your camera and you will see a small icon in the corner, that is the GPS trying to get a lock.

Take a picture and provided it was able to get a lock then you will have a Geo-tagged picture!

STEP 3) SETTING UP GEOTAGGING AND PICTURE MAPS.

Log into yor Picasa Web Albums account and select My Photos > Map Photos (or whatever you called your album earlier)

On the right hand side of the screen there is a RSS link,

 

Right click and copy link.

Next go to Google Maps and in the search bar at the top paste the link from your album, then at the end of the pasted link type: &georss=true   and then hit enter.

 

Now Google maps will load up all the pictures in that album and pin them to the map (provided they have been tagged)

Next centre the map around the area you want to see when your map is embeded and select satellite or terrain or whatever you fancy so the map you are seeing is the exact map you want on your site. Then on the top right of the map there is a button that says Link, click that and it opens a little box containing all the links to embed it into your blog.

You can now customize the size of your map if you like by clicking the link at the bottom or use the default link

Copy the link you want, either your custom one or the "Paste HTML to embed in website" link.

Next log into your blog account, and paste the link wherever you want the picture map to be.

I have created a separate page for mine but it can be added just as effectively into a new post, its up to you. The best thing is that you never need to touch it again! next time you upload a geotagged picture to your map pictures album it will automatically update on your blog too!

STEP 4) INTEGRATING FACEBOOK.

If you want to make your Mobile travel blog and Facebook work together seamlessly and provide your Facebook profile with automatic updates without ever touching a computer then you will need to add the following Facebook apps to your profile,

Sign in to your Facebook profile and then click on the links below:

Simplaris Blogcast

My Picasa Web Albums

Follow the set up instructions and add the two applications to your Facebook profile and then Simplaris Blogcast post will automatically send a post on your mini feed to all your Facebook contacts every time you make a new post and put the post on your profile. 

And My Picasa Web albums application will put a thumbnail link to every album you create on your profile page, saving you many hours uploading the same pictures twice also having to deal with Facebooks upload screen (I have seen many travellers in internet cafe's pulling their hair out because the connection dropped and after an hour of waiting they only have 1 picture uploaded, that just doesn't happen if you use Picasa Web Albums)

STEP 5) TYING UP LOOSE ENDS.

A few other programs you might want to consider including in your travel blog kit that I have found very useful are...

• Shozu

With ShoZu, you can post your photos and videos to multiple sites with just one MMS and the best part you only pay for that one upload! It’s easy, instant, and it saves you money.
Simply MMS or email your photos and videos to ShoZu and we’ll post them to your favorite web sites like Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, your blog and more.

I use this program as a backup up-loader in case something ever goes wrong with Lifeblog as it can do everything Lifeblog can do and a little more probably but I am a fan of Lifeblog's interface and have tried and tested its abilities, also it has a very easy to use and convenient feature that lets you send to pre configured email addresses. Shozu also has the capability to Geotag your picture if you leave it running in the background, but Picasa Web Albums does not currently support the geotags that Shozu puts on the pictures also its alot more intrusive than Nokia Location Tagger. That said I have used it several times and its a very handy app to have on your phone.

• Google Maps

A useful program wherever you are! Personally I rarely use it because it has to download the map data every time its used, which means that if your abroad roaming on another network it could get pretty pricey!

• Nokia Maps 2.0

I use Nokia Maps 2.0 all the time... not often for navigational purposes but mostly for finding out where I am. Its simple enough to pre-load the map data of the country your traveling to before you leave with Nokia Map Loader which will save a fortune on data costs. Also I have tried and tested it across South-East Asia and it has never failed me, even in remote, rural parts of Cambodia and Vietnam and regardless of the fact that the maps for both of those countries are not up to scratch the basic maps Nokia provides for them are good enough to estimate how much longer a journey has left, where you have been dropped off and general orientation. Other maps Nokia provides, i.e. for Thailand are awesome and having been lost in Bangkok many times wandering aimlessly they have appreciation. For me an essential application, and seeing as its pre-loaded everyones a winner... Even if you only have Nokia Maps 1 it still works really well! 

• Nokia Sports Tracker

An amazing little application that uses GPS to track your phone from point to point, it produces alot of info such as Max speed, Height above sea level, distance, average speed and if you take pictures along the way it pins them to a map along with your route. I have used it many times when going on a special trip most recently a motorbike tour of the Vietnam central highlands... It gave me loads of useful info and you can save the data as a Google Earth file. Unfortunately Nokia only provides a little plug-in to add to a website which I find to be a bit restrictive but it does perform quite well and the Sports Tracker website is really good and a link to it would add another great dimension to any website. 

• Opera Mini

Opera Mini 4 enables you to take your full Web experience and digital lifestyle with you — everywhere you go. Whether you want to access your mail, RSS feeds or bank information, Opera Mini is a quick and secure way to get your data on the go. Opera Mini 4 also delivers several new features for quicker scrolling, navigation and page rendering.
A wicked awesome web browser that has some great functions and is quicker than Nokias web browser, it also uses less data which means its cheaper to run.

Click HERE to go to FULL STEP BY STEP GUIDE....!!! 

 

A few finishing touches...

click HERE to go to the full STEP BY STEP GUIDE...!!!

  well... since i put all this together i have been testing it out, and ive managed to make a few improvements to the procedings,

i have dropped Shozu for the latest beta version of nokia location tagger and combined it with nokia share online version 2 (version 3 apparently doesnt work on vodafone uk) and after testing i can say its true! dont install version 3 unless your only going to use it on a WiFi connection.

these new tweaks make everything run alot smoother and it has removed the need for 1 program, which can only be a good thing!

so just to keep confusion to a minimum i have breifly gone through how it all works now...

To create a new post for the blog front page I start with lifeblog and either input a picture, sound, video or text note, and then upload straight to my blog that way...simple

To send a picture to my geotagged map I...

1. Take the picture,
2. Location Tagger automatically tags it,
3. Then open Share Online and select the desired picture and upload to FlickR.
4. FlickR then feeds the pics automaticaly to Google Maps which overlays the picture feed on a map,
5. Google Maps then automatically feeds to the blog and "thats magic".

A few different ideas...

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE FULL STEP BY STEP GUIDE...!!!!

after recomendations and looking through nokias beta labs site, ive decided to give nokia location tracker a go... its only in its beta stage at the moment but they say it will be completely intergrated into the camera and sport a whole host of wicked functions..

you an get nokia location tracker here: http://www.nokia.com/betalabs/locationtagger

also ive been looking at nokia sports tracker, now as it stands sports tracker isnt something we are going to need on our travels but if the nokia sports tracker website decides to create feed links so that the maps that sports tracker produce can be embeded into other sites then ill be interested... ill keep you posted.

Stage 3...A Map and...Geotagging!!!

CLICK HERE TO GO TO A FULL STEP BY STEP GUIDE...!!!

so now what i have is a timeline of all the media i want to keep and at a  single click can upload any given item to an online blog which in turn automatically updates on my facebook profile.

next i started looking at having a map with pin pointed photos on it, and to do this and make it work as well the blog the only way forward was geotagging!

so... i created a flickr account which is pretty simple and then downloaded an application called shozu to my nokia n95.

heres a link: http://www.shozu.com/portal/

and what this application does is similar to lifeblog, it stores all your photos and syncronises with a whole host of web based photo and blog sites at a single click.

i set up my shozu account and followed the on screen instuctions to make it work with my flickr account, which was pretty simple and straight forward. this is where the fun starts...

shozu can be set to geotag pictures and if this info is used correctly can plot pictures onto a google map which can then be posted on your blog, and automatically update itself everytime you send a pic.

so on my n95 i opened tools/connectivity and there is an application called GPS data, open that and it gets a sattelite lock and then simply press the camera button to take your picture. when done open shozu on the phone and there you have a geotagged picture and simply click send to post it off to flickr...

now the next step it getting flickr to work with google maps and plot the geotagged pictures onto a google map.

go into the flickr account and there will be the sent pics at the bottom of the page is a RSS Feed button which say subscribe to this feed, you need to copy that feed and then open google maps,

next paste the feed in the search box and add "&georss=true" at the end of it ( dont put the " in). now hit search and there is your map with the pictures plotted onto it!!!

next simply click at the top right where it says "link to this page" and copy the stuff in the box named "Paste HTML to embed in website"

now open your blog and either create a new page called map or simple slap it into a new post and there you have it!

now all pictures etc on the phone will be saved in lifeblog as a timeline AND shozu (pics only) ready to be plotted onto a map.. and the great thing about both of theese applications is that they save on your phone until you can get to a wifi hotspot and upload rather than paying through the nose!

My blog is here if you wanna see: HAPPYTIMEBLOG

there you can see the lifeblog posts and if you go to the interactive picture map you will see the geotagged map, its all just been put together and we havent left for our travels yet but all the elements are there to see...

Stage 2... integration with facebook

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE FULL STEP BY STEP GUIDE...!!!

Now like most people im sure, i have a facebook account which i wanted to somehow intergrate this with my blog to keep in touch and up to date with what my friends were up to. i prefer facebook and most of my friens use it thats why im using it and not myspace or another,

i found an application on the facebook applications section called FlogBlog, which is another great app and pretty straight forward to set-up, just add the app to the profile of choice and simply follow its on screen instructions and then as if by magic at the bottom of the selected profile is a feed of new posts from your typepad blog (or other) completely customizable to suit every need! and it posts in the mini feed on ll your friends profiles so they know when there is a new post!!!!

but i wanted more!!!!

Stage 1... The Blog and Lifeblog

CLICK HERE TO GET TO THE FULL STEP BY STEP GUIDE .....!!!!!!!!

After opening up the n95 and getting familiar with it i focused on Lifeblog, a pre loaded program which collects all the info on the phone (texts, pics, videos etc) and turns it into a timeline... this was a perfect starting block!

One of the key features of Lifeblog for me was the ability to create a "text note" of a pretty sizeable length. and when used with a nokia SU-8W wireless keyboard it becomes very versatile.

i liked this because with it there is the ability to keep large slaps of text, like a normal diary. also the ability to take pics etc and write text notes on the move/bus and form a timeline that could be updated at any convinient point along the way!

so now to the blog, it needed to work with lifeblog for me and it needed to be simple to upload any posts i wanted,

there are lots that do, vox is a free one and im pretty sure with not much digging around many other free ones do too, but i went for a Typepad blog, this is because it allows the upload of "text notes" which vox didnt seem to do and like i said this was important for me.

so i set up a typepad account and made the design of my blog etc, and then set up lifeblog to upload to it, which is pretty straight-forward, in fact typepad comes pre configured on lifeblog which made everything very simple.....

and that was that, i now have 1 device that creates a picture, text, sound and video timeline with the ability upload with a single click to my weblog...but that wasnt enough

The Idea...

CLICK HERE TO GET TO THE FULL STEP BY STEP GUIDE...!!!

soon im off going travelling to south-east asia, for quite some time, and i wanted to be able to stay in touch with everyone back home, i wanted to be able to easily keep an online diary and upload pictures and even plot the pics on a map, but...

i want to keep it simple, i didnt want to be lugging around expensive laptops or sitting in internet cafe's for hours on end or even having lots of devices with miles of cables and chargers. what i wanted was a simple and very portable solution that fully intergrates all my blogs and facebook etc with as few clicks and hastle as possible.

so after much research i settled on a nokia n95 8g, a wicked smartphone which in theory could do all the above......

any of the steps below i can go into more detail if required just ask baby!...

Here is a link to the blog, HAPPYTIMEBLOG the geotagged map is in the other pages section under interactive picture map, its pretty easy to find. our leaving date is the end of march so until then all the posts will only be for testing purposes