IF YOU ENJOY geotagging images like I do, you'll discover Flickr's new Map facility puts photos exactly where they should be located--as long as you don't shoot outside of licensed areas. The maps used on Flickr and Yahoo! do not inherit geodetic data from the Ordnance Survey of Ireland so that means if your GPS data comes from a handheld navigation device--like my Garmin GPS--you may be accurate enough to target a missile but some of your images might be 20 miles away from where Yahoo! thinks they're located. Also, the map view is does not snap to the satellite view in every part of Ireland where I tried to place my photos. This has not discouraged those with Flickr albums because as Mike Arrington notes, more than a million images were geotagged within 24 hours of Flickr announcing the new map functionality. (That would not include Euan Semple, the Scot with his hands in the air due to a major bout of Flickr-lag.)
I think there are big data licensing issue behind the images failing to align on maps in part of Europe . I have no reason to distrust my GPS unit since it mapped me to width of an interstate highway shoulder in many of my photostreams when I shot and tagged them on stateside locations. I also think the satellite photography used by Flickr is accurate because it caught Twenty Major pissing in the north side of the River Liffey. He wouldn't be caught on the south side ever.
Stewart Butterfield -- "Great Shot! Where'd you take that?"
Flickr Forums -- "Bugs" where several comment on poor Yahoo! mapping in Ireland and UK.
