I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

First the laughter:

Flickr has recently launched a fully integrated mapping tool (as opposed to a few other sites which had been doing it via tags and the Flickr API) and it’s flippin’ clever.

As an example go to the Kew Gardens Group map – a map which, not surprisingly, displays all the pictures that have been added to the Kew Gardens group. First thing to do is click the ‘Hybrid’ link top-right so you get the satellite image.

Then zoom in to get more detail, and click on the pink dots to see actual photos.

Also try using the Search Box and the Filters tab at the bottom (e.g. just type ‘alpine’ into the search and press ‘Go’ and you’ll just see pictures of alpines or the Alpine House)

And if you have a Flickr account then login and it just gets better. One of the most amazing things is how they have set up the interface so you can ‘place’ (or geotag) your photos just by dragging and dropping them onto a map. Which probably explains why there are so many pictures that have already been given a location.

Flippin amazing. The only downside is how rubbish some users are at putting things in the right place on the map (there are Kew pictures at Barnes and in Richmond Park!).

Now the crying:

My efforts to create the ‘Where in the world’ map of blog posts and pictures now appear somewhat in vain, and indeed in this world of Blogspot, Flickr, MySpace etc I have serious doubts about whether the effort to create and maintain a blog and photo gallery on your own domain/hosting is really worth the effort. Answers on a postcard….