I have a friend in Hawaii who sent me a photo (taken with an iPhone) via his gmail account - the photo was taken sometime back in January.
somehow, when I was viewing it, it became astoundingly clear that this photo was geotagged, and Google Maps or Earth somehow picked up on this tag, and I could literally see where the photo was taken on Google Maps.
I've now tried to reproduce this so I can see where in fact my friend is - of course to check to see if he is in one of the tsunami areas.
I've tried a dozen ways to see the GPS coordinates in the image (they aren't there) and to look at this in Picassa or Google Earth etc and I just can't get it to work.
Does any one have any idea how this actually works?
I am also astounded and somewhat alarmed that this information is so easily transmitted - in this case it is a good thing - but in other cases, this could have some rather negative consequences to those concerned with privacy matters.
