Attaching location information to content is not exactly a new concept. Sites like SuperGeotagged.com and even Google Maps already allow a growing number of users to upload their photos to the service. The photos are then overlaid on top of the actual location those photos were taken. This creates a totally unique user experience when browsing photos.
If we take this concept further and extend it to not just photos, but blog posts. Currently the only way to indicate in which location a blog post originated, would be for the author to manually indicate this. What got me thinking about this is idea is that we’re about to get a very powerful blogging platform right in our pocket that we take everywhere with us. That’s right the iPhone 3G. Taking advantage of the new models GPS capabilities, we’ve already seen TypePad demonstrate their ability to blog from the device and no doubt other popular blogging platforms (crosses my fingers for WordPress) will follow suit. this means that no matter where you are in the world you can snap a picture write some content around it and post it to your blog.
This post could obviously geotag the photo(s) with your location information, but what if your blog post also featured location information. As bloggers we could then offer our audience a different visual way to consume our content. Either using a world map-overlay approach as mentioned above, or even extend that further to a 3D Globe, similar to that used by the News updates on the Nintendo Wii.
This would be fantastic for people who are constantly mobile, travelling to different events, holidays etc. So what if your not an iPhone owner, how would GeoBlogging work ? Over the past year or so, we’ve seen a number of manufacturers including GPS modules in their laptops. The missing piece of the puzzle in that scenario is simply the blogging software. It simply needs to query the GPS for your longitude and latitude and tag your blog post with your location information.
Given that a majority of blogging may occur around centralised area (capital cities, your home / work), the UI would need to allow users to sort through multiple entries from either the same or very close locations.
I look forward to the future of location-aware devices, they offer amazing potential, especially GeoBlogging.
