It seems that Google and Apple have been caught holding hands. Close onlookers noticed that it appears as if the two companies might be “working together to bring geotagging to iPhoto.” Others feel that “collaboration” is far too strong a word.
Victor Mihailescu gathered some of the evidence of this connection. The first person to notice it, according to Mihailescu, was “a Mactelchat forum user which goes by the name of javester.'” This person “has been investigating the iPhoto code.”
I’ll try leave the technical explanations to Mihailescu, but “inside the iPhoto app bundle,” there was one key “called GPSMapURL which is preset to http://maps.google.com/maps?q=%f+%f.” javester’s discoveries didn’t stop there, though.
“A hidden button labeled Show’ was also discovered,” Mihailescu wrote, “and after some tinkering they got it working, and the video posted of it clearly shows the button accessing Google Maps and displaying a map with the location where the photo was taken.”
Digg users remained mostly skeptical. “Pliep” wrote, “That’s not collaboration, that is linking to a Google site. Address Book has a map of’ feature that links to MapQuest.com. Does that mean MapQuest and Apple are up to something’?”
Another comment accepted the evidence as proof of collaboration, but remained “underwhelmed” by the result. “I was expecting something much bigger of a collaboration than just geotagging features,” responded “flypcide.” “Whoopdefreakin’ do.”
If geotagging doesn’t grab your attention, though, this could at least provide hope for more interesting things to come. javester asked, “Could geo-tagged pictures be just the tip of the iceberg?” and then answered, “I think so, and I’ll show you why when we finally publish the article that made me poke around iPhoto in the first place!”
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Doug is a staff writer for Murdok. Visit Murdok for the latest eBusiness news.