A quick post - Bandwagon, which offers automatic backup of iTunes song files and associated library data and syncing across computers has just released a new ftp version of their software. In return for letting you know about it - it actually looks super useful - I can get 6 months free to try it out, and bring back a full review for you. Check it out.

[UPDATE] I’m 2.06GB out of 45 GB backed up after 3 days. So far so good.

In order to geotag my photos, I used to use a homebrewed Automator workflow that used the currently selected photo in iPhoto, and opened it using GeoTagger (an applescript based app from Craig Stanton) which grabs the current coordinates of your view in Google Earth and embeds the coordinates into the EXIF info of your photos. For some reason it would take an age to launch the first time around, and was generally unreliable (the workflow that is, not Geotagger).

When geotagging photos using track logs, the only real choice is GPSPhotoLinker. I love the fact that GPSPhotoLinker also embeds city, state and country info into your photos as well as regular lat and lon coordinates, but it will only take input into photos as hand-keyed text when not using GPX track logs; i.e. there is no integration with any external mapping programs. After several weeks of hand typing coordinates out of Google Earth and into GPSPhotoLinker, I decided an Applescript was in order to do the job for me, and sorted something out last weekend which, by using UI scripting (i.e. it manipulates menu items and enters text on your behalf), grabs the current co-ordinates from Google Earth and inputs them into the ‘Manually Enter Coordinates’ dialog in GPSPhotoLinker, and then presses the Apply Button. This saves me at least 20 seconds a photo, which makes it worth it for me, and by using the Keyboard pane in System Preferences you can assign it a hot key for instant access in iPhoto.

If you are happy not embedding the extra info into your photos, and GeoTagger works for you, then I’d stick with it. Otherwise, if you were having trouble with it, want a different way of adding GPS info into your EXIF headers, or would like to add the extra data into your Photos that GPSPhotoLinker offers, then take a look at this script.

Usage:

1. Drag the photo(s) you want to tag into GPSPhotoLinker’s Manual Mode (from iPhoto or wherever else)
2. Find the position the photo was taken in Google Earth
3. Make sure the photo or photos are selected in GPSPhotoLinker
4. Run the script
5. You’re done.

Download the script here. Credit is given to Craig Stanton to the first part of the script which gets the co-ordinates from Google Earth.

Or, the code is below if you want to integrate into your own workflow in some way:

tell application "Google Earth"
set viewInf to GetViewInfo
set coords to {latitude of viewInf, longitude of viewInf}
end tell
set long to (text item 2 of coords)
set lat to (text item 1 of coords)
activate application "GPSPhotoLinker"
tell application "System Events"
tell process "GPSPhotoLinker"
-- GUI Scripting statements:
click menu item "Manually Enter Coordinates…" of menu 1 of menu bar item "Special" of menu bar 1
set value of text field 1 of window "Manual Coordinate Entry" to lat as text
set value of text field 2 of window "Manual Coordinate Entry" to long as text
click button "Apply" of window "Manual Coordinate Entry"
end tell
end tell

I’ve been beavering away adding the icon downloads to the site - restoring what I had on the old pages originally, and adding a host of new content. So far I have put back the PC Card Readers, Sony Ericsson Mobile Phones and Sandisk Thumb Drives. New are the Western Digital Icons, with most editions of the My Book range and the Silver and Black Passport Drives too.

I also have the major updates to the Sony Ericsson range online, with models like the M600, W900, P990 - basically anything bluetoothable is there. Finally, the neat Sandisk Cruzer Crossfire range been added to the Sandisk Cruzer Icons I had up before. Check out the previews below for more. The last bit of (shocking) news is that all of these are also now available as zip of Windows .ico files too - these are untested though, as I don’t have a windows machine at my disposal.

Icon Previews

Western Digital

Sony Ericsson

Sandisk Thumb Drives

PC Card Readers

Enjoy. Please, if you download these and use them regularly consider donating to help fund the time and bandwidth this site takes. I’ll add a paypal link to the site soon, but until then - my email is keith @ thisdomainname . If you don’t want to donate in cold hard cash, a quick email to say thanks is just as appreciated.

As I’m in a posting mood, I might as well give you some previews of the icons I have made which will be on the downloads page in the next couple of weeks. I am planning a matrix of pretty much every relevant cell phone on the market, with a downloadable icon for each model in windows and mac format. There will also be an Automator workflow for each model, which lets you pull photos from iPhoto to your cell via bluetooth at the right resolution. Great for wallpaper, MMS or screensavers.

Sony Ericsson K800i in Silver / Black

Nokia, Motorola, Blackberry, LG all coming soon, as well as new thumb drives from Sandisk and hard drives from Western Digital. Stay tuned!