More OpenCalais – testing, testing!

Advanced warning: this is just a test post for myself, so only read on if you’re interested in the Calais service, and geotagging in particular …

I’ve also now found and installed the ‘official’ Tagaroo plugin from Calais.  Here’s a quick test to see how it works.

Unlike the others it automatically suggests tags and even photos that match, constantly updating as you type.  So already I’m seeing loads related to Calais, northern France.

But what if I type an obscure location, such as the tiny hamlet of Windmill, which is just near one of my favourite holiday locations at Trevone, near Padstow.  Well, it certainly seems to have recognised something as a location, as it has automatically suggested Cornwall, but frustratingly they are all converted into plain text tags, so I can’t see if it just thinks it is about a windmill, rather than if it has detected that Windmill is a location.

There’s even a drop-down that lets me restrict the types of tag, but the options are just ‘All’,  ‘Social’ and ‘Country’.  And Country only returns France.

So let’s give it something simpler – I grew up in the village of Cuffley and near there there is a tiny place called Brickendon, which I’m not aware of as meaning anything else!  But neither Auto Tagger nor Tagaroo have spotted that one.  Shame, I wonder what the data source is that they are using for geography, and how detailed it is?

Oddly the Calais Auto Tagger mentioned in a previous post seems to pull out things slightly differently, especially locations.  For example it has actually given me “Cuffley, United Kingdom”.

Oh, and one last thing.  If you have Tagaroo and Auto Tagger both installed, it looks like Auto Tagger overrides anything you add from Tagaroo

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