Claus Wolf of mactopics.de joins us on Chit Chat Across the Pond for the first time to try and convince me that meta data is important and that I should appreciate it. He’s doing this because so many times I have made fun of meta data in the past and said it was silly. Claus walks me through meta data examples on Amazon, blog posts, Google’s page rank system, EXIF data on photos and explains in each example how it improves findability through context. It sounds like a dry topic but because Claus and I hit on the same silly wavelength we had a blast. You can follow Claus on Twitter @mactopics.
The image we talked about can be found here btw: https://www.flickr.com/photos/nosillacast/22653509220/in/photostream/
Here a link to HoudahGeo the Geotagging Software I mentioned in the podcast: https://www.houdah.com/houdahGeo/?lang=en – thank you @plumperstrunt for asking the question!
In my particular case I need another piece of software to convert the .fit file the GPS Logger creates to .gpx and that is GPSBabel, which can be found at http://www.gpsbabel.org. The GPS Logger Device is CANMORE G-PORTER GP-102, which you can get for <€60 at various shops. Make sure to use Allison's Amazon link
Other important roles for metadata (normally written as one word) include the disambiguation of topics (same word means different things) and collation of synonyms (different words mean the same thing). For disambiguation, look no further than Apple. If Allison is talking about photos, is she talking about the generic concept of photographs or is she talking about the app by Apple. Metadata (e.g. Photos App) can help with that disambiguation. Likewise, Allison mentioned a picture of bird of paradise. That can refer an actual bird (in the family Paradisaeidae), as well as to plants in one of three different genus. In some talks I’ve given about metadata, if I’m searching for info about bald eagles, I’m probably referring to Haliaeetus leucocephalus, rather than to follically challenged rock bands from my youth.
Going the other direction, I have some photos of a tree I’ve labeled as a Linden, which is the name I know it by. But in the part of the US where I now live, locals would refer to it as a basswood. And if I were over visiting Bart, he’d probably refer to it as a lime tree, all of which reference one of several species in the genus Tilia. If I really wanted to get precise, then using the ITIS taxonomic serial number of 21535 would point specifically to the collection of trees in that genus.