14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has added geotagging capabilities to one of the components of the next generation of Windows Live Essentials, namely Windows Live Photo Gallery 2011 (Wave 4).
The latest development milestone of Windows Live Photo Gallery shipped with Windows Live Essentials Wave 4 Build 15.4.3001.0809 is designed to allow used to geotag their pictures.
According to Chris Pendleton, the Bing Maps Technical Evangelist for Microsoft the new geotagging function added to Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta Refresh is intimately connected with Bing Maps, the Redmond company’s mapping, search and location platform.
“For those of you not familiar with the concept, it basically means you can add location information to a photo,” he explained.
“This provides location context to a photo such as where the photo was taken or the ability to sort your photos by location. You can tag the photos to the fidelity of your choosing,” Pendleton added.
Of course, there are additional enhancements to the next version of Windows Live Photo Gallery, and users need to monitor this space as an update on the evolution of Essentials will be provided later today.
The plan is to have Windows Live Photo Gallery 2011 Beta Refresh Build 15.4.3002.0810 enable users to easily define geographical context for Bing Maps and for Photosynth.
“This is important since it will enable mapping of all these photos on Bing Maps or Windows Live. I’m not committing to that, but it’s definitely something that we could enable in the future,” Pendleton revealed.
“Also, there’s a function to publish Photosynth’s (Create Menu | More Tools | Create a Photosynth). So, from within Windows Live Photo Gallery you can select a bunch of photos and create a Photosynth that you can publish to Photosynth.com.
“If you geotag it, we’ll render the synth on Bing Maps - that’s already built in,” he added.
Windows Live Photo Gallery 2011 Beta Refresh Build 15.4.3002.0810 is available for download here.