Powder River
01-07-2009, 03:15
So I'll be the first to admit that my system for getting my pictures posted to my journal site is inelegant at best. It consists of filling a memory card, waiting to get to a post office, mailing said memory card to my mother, who oh-so graciously ports a grand total of 40GB of pictures onto her already-full hard drive over six months, and finally onto Flickr. In the process, I completely lost one card full of pictures, and another arrived with the envelope ripped in half, but somehow was still inside.
So I've been following CES (http://ces.engadget.com/) pretty closely, and I stumbled upon the following (plausible) solution.
1. Use an Eyefi card (http://www.eye.fi/). This is an SD card with wifi built in, that automatically uploads all of your pictures to one of 20 chosen picture sites, such as Flickr. This alone could be all the solution needed, as wifi seemed readily available in most trail towns, however it would depend on what kind of setup is needed each time you encounter a hotspot. (for example, how do you log onto an encrypted network with your camera?)
2. Carry a Mifi (http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2008/12/09/novatel-mifi-proves-3g-hotspot-and-sexy-can-coexist/). This is a tiny 3G network device (kind of like the ones you buy for your laptop from Verizon that lets your laptop get on the network) that is also a wireless router, essentially a portable wireless hotspot. Heck, everybody in the shelter would have wifi. With this you could log on with the Eyefi (http://www.eye.fi/) and your photos would automatically be zipped online! According to the Eyefi site (http://www.eye.fi/), this would seem plausible as it does say that it can be used in such a fashion with your home network.
The downside to this, that I can see is the lack of 3g coverage along the trail, and which network this thing is on. I wouldn't hold out hopes for good coverage at all, but I seemed to get Edge coverage by AT&T fairly frequently along the ridgetops, so I guess the question is can the Mifi still log onto a 2G network and broadcast.
The other side to this is the question of can the Eyefi SD card handle a foreign wifi location on its own without need of being plugged into a computer for setup. If it can do that, then there wouldn't be as big a need for the Mifi card, because you could upload in most towns. However, the Mifi does, in theory, allow you to have a truly "live" journal, or at least with pictures updated daily.
The last piece of this puzzle for me is geotagging. My perfect trail journal would have daily updated journal and photos over cellular networks, displayed on a map interface on the main page. It is easy enough to assign the journal entries a GPS coordinate, like Postholer does (http://postholer.com/gmap/entryMap.php?trail=at&stMark=10&mid=223&jdomain=postholer&lat=41.63783&lon=-73.53278&vw=4&zoom=13). And I imagine with a custom web page, you could link one or all of the photos to that entry, and call it good. That way, the entry would display all of the photos taken that day, and your entry alone would show up on the map. However, the real holy grail would be for each photo to be marked with GPS data, so that photo you took at the top of Whitecap Mountain would actually appear in that location on the map. For this, your camera needs a GPS device. Towards this end I found PhotoGPS (http://www.cameratown.com/news/news.cfm/hurl/id%7C3758), which mounts on the hotshoe of your camera (Canon G9 or similar) or the Sony GPS Tracker (http://www.dpreview.com/news/0608/06080202sonygpscs1.asp), which rides on your backpack or waistband. Both of these devices log GPS data seperately from your camera, and synchs it to the EXIF data later via special software. In other words, not an elegant solution for the thru hiker. However, perhaps it would be worth carrying for a project after the trail. The best hope for this functionality is a camera with built-in GPS (http://blogs.zdnet.com/digitalcameras/?p=245), however none of the big camera makers appear to be making these. So maybe geotagging is still a ways off for the thru hiker.
Anyhow, I am just rambling to myself about the exciting possibilities, but I hope I've given some folks some ideas who are planning their thru hikes. :-?
Powder River
So I've been following CES (http://ces.engadget.com/) pretty closely, and I stumbled upon the following (plausible) solution.
1. Use an Eyefi card (http://www.eye.fi/). This is an SD card with wifi built in, that automatically uploads all of your pictures to one of 20 chosen picture sites, such as Flickr. This alone could be all the solution needed, as wifi seemed readily available in most trail towns, however it would depend on what kind of setup is needed each time you encounter a hotspot. (for example, how do you log onto an encrypted network with your camera?)
2. Carry a Mifi (http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2008/12/09/novatel-mifi-proves-3g-hotspot-and-sexy-can-coexist/). This is a tiny 3G network device (kind of like the ones you buy for your laptop from Verizon that lets your laptop get on the network) that is also a wireless router, essentially a portable wireless hotspot. Heck, everybody in the shelter would have wifi. With this you could log on with the Eyefi (http://www.eye.fi/) and your photos would automatically be zipped online! According to the Eyefi site (http://www.eye.fi/), this would seem plausible as it does say that it can be used in such a fashion with your home network.
The downside to this, that I can see is the lack of 3g coverage along the trail, and which network this thing is on. I wouldn't hold out hopes for good coverage at all, but I seemed to get Edge coverage by AT&T fairly frequently along the ridgetops, so I guess the question is can the Mifi still log onto a 2G network and broadcast.
The other side to this is the question of can the Eyefi SD card handle a foreign wifi location on its own without need of being plugged into a computer for setup. If it can do that, then there wouldn't be as big a need for the Mifi card, because you could upload in most towns. However, the Mifi does, in theory, allow you to have a truly "live" journal, or at least with pictures updated daily.
The last piece of this puzzle for me is geotagging. My perfect trail journal would have daily updated journal and photos over cellular networks, displayed on a map interface on the main page. It is easy enough to assign the journal entries a GPS coordinate, like Postholer does (http://postholer.com/gmap/entryMap.php?trail=at&stMark=10&mid=223&jdomain=postholer&lat=41.63783&lon=-73.53278&vw=4&zoom=13). And I imagine with a custom web page, you could link one or all of the photos to that entry, and call it good. That way, the entry would display all of the photos taken that day, and your entry alone would show up on the map. However, the real holy grail would be for each photo to be marked with GPS data, so that photo you took at the top of Whitecap Mountain would actually appear in that location on the map. For this, your camera needs a GPS device. Towards this end I found PhotoGPS (http://www.cameratown.com/news/news.cfm/hurl/id%7C3758), which mounts on the hotshoe of your camera (Canon G9 or similar) or the Sony GPS Tracker (http://www.dpreview.com/news/0608/06080202sonygpscs1.asp), which rides on your backpack or waistband. Both of these devices log GPS data seperately from your camera, and synchs it to the EXIF data later via special software. In other words, not an elegant solution for the thru hiker. However, perhaps it would be worth carrying for a project after the trail. The best hope for this functionality is a camera with built-in GPS (http://blogs.zdnet.com/digitalcameras/?p=245), however none of the big camera makers appear to be making these. So maybe geotagging is still a ways off for the thru hiker.
Anyhow, I am just rambling to myself about the exciting possibilities, but I hope I've given some folks some ideas who are planning their thru hikes. :-?
Powder River