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Ron Logan
Contact Info:Ron Logan, RSDE ronlo (at) microsoft (dot) com Microsoft Research One Microsoft Way Redmond, WA 98052-6399 Tel: 425 705-4877 Fax: 425 706-7329 http://research.microsoft.com/~ronlo/ I am a Research Software Design Engineer in the Interactive Visual Media Group. I'm working on any of a number of projects at any given time, but my main focus recently has been with geo-coding digital photos. That means somehow encoding the location the picture was taken into the digitial photo itself. We encode that data through well-documented EXIF location tags. Unfortunately, most digital cameras don't automatically stamp the photos they take with your current location. So in order to more-easily geocode the digital photos I take, I've been carrying a GPS unit around with me for over a year now. Sometimes I even take two different units with me in order to evaluate the differences between them. And not just carrying them with me, but also turning them on to record my precise location whenever I am on the move (it's driving my wife crazy). I have accumulated megabytes of track information over this last year. My primary GPS device is a Garmin Geko 201. It's very small and has a huge track storage ability. But unfortunately it doesn't display maps. For mapping purposes I carry a Magellan SporTrak Map. It's much bigger and heavier, more expensive, stores fewer track points -- but it shows my location on a map. If Garmin ever comes out with a version of the Geko that displays maps, I'll buy one and get rid of all my other devices in a heart beat. My primary project involving geocoded images is the World-Wide Media eXchange project. I've uploaded thousands of my geocoded photos to the database for that project. I've also written a couple utilities that can be used outside the WWMX project: a GPS track downloader and a digitial photo location stamper. See the Downloads page on the WWMX site for more information, or search for "WWMX" on the MSR Code Download site. The little photos of me on this page (which change randomly when you refresh) are all geocoded with the location at which they were taken. One of the downloads I'm responsible for is a "story" viewer. The WWMX client application can string registered photos together into a slide-show-like story, and you can package the story into XML and send it to someone. They can then download and install a little "story viewer" application from Microsoft Research. However, we neglected to include any sample stories with that install, so if you are looking for some, here are a few I've created so far: 
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