foolography

Nikon just issued firmware updates for their D3 and D700 – these add a new cool GPS feature:

• “Use GPS to set camera clock item has been added to the GPS item in the setup menu. When Yes is selected, date and time information acquired via connection to a GPS device is used to set the camera’s internal clock. After selecting Yes for the first time, turn the camera off and then on again to reacquire GPS data.”

Oddly, the updates for the D300s and D3X don’t include this new feature. – A quick check on the D300s showed that the feature was not already present, which was my first thought. The firmware update did not change anything either.

see all the details here or here.

I wonder if they thought of the 19 second offset between GPS Time and UTC? (read about it here)

It seems almost unbelievable, but after a long time of preparations, and a lot of hurdles we had to overcome, we have finally reached the point where we can proudly announce the availability of the new Unleashed – our tiny wireless geotagging solution for Nikon D200 and up.

While we’re setting up world-wide distribution to bring the Unleashed to retailers near you, we’ve set up a small online-shop for your convenience in the meantime. You can find it here: www.foolography.com/shop

Since we have quite a few prospective customers waiting for the availability of the Unleashed, we are expecting to be out of stock fairly soon, so don’t hesitate. However, production for the next batch has already begun, and will be available shortly.

We’re very glad to have finally come to this point and we hope you’re as excited as we are. If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to contact us.

We wish you a happy holiday season, possibly including a lot of fun with your new Unleashed!

On September 22nd, Google released a new version of Picasa. Of course, the most interesting improvement being enhanced geotagging.

The new “Places” button shows an integrated Google Maps window, on which the positions of your (currently selected) geotagged photos are shown as pins, and onto which you can drag other photos, in order to manually geotag them. Read more here

It took much longer than expected, but after several delays due to problems with manufacturers and suppliers, our Unleashed, the long awaited wireless direct geotagging solution for Nikon DSLRs, is finally nearing the end of its production, and will be ready for sale in a few days.

The first batch will probably be sold out very soon, as we have accumulated numerous requests via e-mail, but a page will be added to this website very soon, for everyone to order the Unleashed online.

The next, much larger production should take just a few weeks, now that all the initial hurdles have been overcome. Starting here in Germany, we are in the process of setting up worldwide distribution, so expect to find the Unleashed at your local photo dealer soon.

Nikon announced another new consumer DSLR, the D5000.

It fits somewhere in between the D60 and the D90, it’s a little bigger than the D60, but doesn’t have a built-in AF-motor. Instead it features a swiveling LCD display, Liveview, and 12.3 Megapixels and HD Movie recording. Anyway, read the details elsewhere.

But guess what – it supports direct geotagging! It has the same connector as the D90. So the Unleashed D90 that’s reaching its final stages of development, will work for the D5000 just as well.

Direct geotagging for the entire line-up of Nikon’s DSLRs by foolography coming soon, stay tuned for that.

On the last day of the PMA, a Retailers Hot Picks session was held where selected Retailers could share the best products they found at PMA09. Our Unleashed was one of very few of these Hotpicks.

Read it here

Our top product, the Unleashed is a winner of the 2009 DIMA Innovative Digital Product Award.

“DIMA Innovative Digital Product Awards recognize products or services utilizing new technologies and/or applications that make the product either distinct or the first of its kind.” Read more here.

Thank you for this honoring award!

foolography is now a GmbH (Gesellschaft mit beschraenkter Haftung – limited company/cooperation). This means serious business :-)

Our registration number is HRB 87557 in the Handelsregister (commercial register)

flickr announces that they passed 100,000,000 geotagged photos. So more than 3% of all flickr photos are geotagged. Most of these were probably tagged manually, a lot of work that is easily avoidable.

What was that I was saying about a boom in geotagging this year?

Apple announced iPhoto 09 as part of iLife 09 today, which brings lots of geotagging support to mac users. For those unfamiliar with it, iPhoto is a very popular photo managing and editing software. The new version has a feature Apple calls “Places”, which makes use of geotags in photos. You can sort and search your images by location, either in a list of places or on a map you can zoom into.

This means that the advantages of geotagging will now become evident to many more photographers, and since most other software companies are going to follow Apples lead, watch out for a boom in geotagging support this year!

Don’t forget: iPhoto only makes use of geotagged photos, you still need to actually geotag them first, for example using foolography products.