Have you ever shown a picture to someone and them ask, “Where is that?” Ever wondered where all of your pictures are on a map or the globe? Wonder no more! Now you can point to where your pictures where taken and the next date you show them off to your friends have the pictures show up on a map precisely where they were taken. How can you do that? It’s all part of the magic of HoudahGEO and geocoding.

*Editor: At the end of that review is a chance to win 1 of 5 HoudahGEO licenses. Read on!

HoudahGEO is an application that lets you encode geocoded knowledge (latitude and longitude) into your picture so that mapping apps like Flickr and Google Earth can place them correctly. To do that HoudahGEO lets you upload your pictures, gives you the option of how you wish to encode the info, and finally allows you to export these photos with EXIF/XMP tags and save them to your Mac or to upload them to either Google Earth or Flickr.

It’s really a quite simple process and only takes a minute to do each picture (or a batch whether they are all in the same location). After choosing your picture(s) from either your library or from a folder you have the choice of how you wish to encode your pictures — you can import info straight from a GPS or a file, pinpoint your picture’s location on a Google Map, or (my favorite) use Google Earth to pinpoint the location.

Once you’ve coded the location you have another choice — where do you want to upload the pictures, or do you want to upload them at all? I opted with uploading them to Flickr as it has a

map that everyone can see of all the geocoded pictures on Flickr (If you are going to use Flickr you will have to first give it permission to upload these pictures to your Flickr detail. manufacture certain that “Hide your photos’ EXIF data” is set to “No” and “Import EXIF location data” is set to “Yes”, and next when you choose to upload to Flickr in HoudahGEO press the “Clear Credentials” button and when you press OK it should open Flickr in a browser window and ask you whether you want to allow that photo with EXIF goods to be uploaded.)

Until I saw HoudahGEO I didn’t think anything of geocoding photos but now I’m doing it to any pictures that I take, and sometimes I’m just taking pictures so I can geocode them.

Freebie moment! Pierre, from Houdah Software, has graciously given us 5 licenses to giveaway so that others can enjoy HoudahGEO just as much as I have so here’s what we are going to do! To be entered into the giveaway, download a trial of HoudahGEO next:

Tell us what you think would manufacture HoudahGEO better.

or

Tell us how you would use HoudahGEO.

The contest starts now and ends February 15, 2007, at Midnight EST, so leave your comments now and get entered to win that wonderful app.

In case you missed that giveaway, HoudahGEO is created by Pierre Bernard and distributed by Houdah Software as shareware. You can purchase a separate user license for US$40.27; whether you are a student you can buy the license at a discounted price of US$20.90.

Orginal post by Rory Rezzelle