Introducing: World Explorer and TagMaps

January 17, 2007 on 9:41 am | by Mor | In Media in Context, News, TagMaps |

Can we automatically extract information from Flickr geotagged images to create a rich visualization of the world we live in? The answer is: you bet.

Introducing: World Explorer. While the amazing PhotoSynth (from Microsoft!) allows you to explore a specific landmark in depth, World Explorer opens a window to explore the entire world through the eyes of the users of Flickr.

We use the public geotagged photos contributed to the world by the lively and active Flickr community, and the tags associated with these images, to help you explore the world like never before. Our system automatically extracts the tags that are relevant and representative for each map region or zoom level — and connects these tags to the photos that represent that area.

Ok, enough with this high-level blah blah. Start exploring! Find out what’s important in Paris. Check for what you could see if you go north of Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Discover whether there is anything interesting on the west coast of England. Decide whether you should go for vacation in Maui or Kauai. Make serendipity lead your way around your own home town (Yoda in San Francisco?). Or simply explore Africa. If you discover something interesting, don’t forget to let us know right here.

To add to the fun, we also introduce Night Explorer and Trip Explorer. Night Explorer visualizes Flickr night photos in the same way, giving you a view of how Flickr users see the world after dark. Trip Explorer, on the other hand, is not based on Flickr at all - but rather, on the contribution of Yahoo! Travel’s Trip Planner users. What are the interesting Trip Planner items in Vermont? What do people visit (ahem, plan to visit) when they go to Austin, Texas? What are the non-obvious locations to visit in Los Angeles? It may be interesting to compare the three different views (Night, Trip and World Explorer) for the same map area.

Still with me? Not exploring yet? Well, good news: you can embed a version of TagMaps / World Explorer on your blog, web page, or anywhere else. Just like we did here:

As you can see, this embedded element is set to take you to Yosemite Valley in Yosemite National Park. When you put it on your blog, you can choose whichever place you want to start with.

Still reading? You should be really be exploring by now. If you are reading this far, you must be a developer. Well, we have something for you, too.

World Explorer is using two main components. The first is TagMaps, a Flash/SWF object that visualizes tags (i.e., text terms) on a map. The second component is a data APIs - an API that provides the tags to display, including the location and size for each tag. Both of these elements are available for developers to use. Mash it up! you can use both elements together to have a version of our World Explorer on your own page. Or, you can use TagMaps with your own data source to plot tags from your own application on a map. Finally, you can use our World Explorer tag data for your own map-based application. Check here for more details.

One last note for the curious people out there - you can learn more about how the World Explorer data is created here, or on our TagMaps FAQs. Enjoy!

Finally, a word of thanks - to Flickr users - keep uploading all these geotagged images that help us extract such wonderful data.

19 Comments »

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[…] on the same principle as … oh wait it’s easier just to show you first (RSS readers start your browsers now to view the Flash Badge Widget Thing)… […]

Pingback by geobloggers » Blog Archive » TagMaps from Yahoo! Research Berkeley — January 17, 2007 #
Mor, you need to invest in an atlas. Thats Wales, not the “west coast of England”

Comment by Rick — January 17, 2007 #
Rick - that’s a bad link, of course fixed.

Comment by Mor — January 17, 2007 #
Mor, this is great! I can *finally* retire my use of Microsoft MapPoint and stop having to update my MP service password every freaking 90 days (and stop getting dozens of nag emails to tell me I will have to change it soon). As ugly and outdated as MapPoint seems these days, it was the only API around that offered a proximity search for points of interest.

The TagMaps Data API looks like a really nice upgrade since it leverages community-generated POI naming/description instead of relying on a commercially generated DB. Once I migrate to the TagMaps API I hope to see far fewer results like “AAA Radiator Repair”!

Comment by AndyF — January 17, 2007 #
Wow I think this concept is great!

2 (constructive I hope) criticisms:

1 - for any given map location, the main tags that appear are place names - which doesn’t really add much in an informational sense.

Eg if I look at a map of Kings Cross in London, the main tag that comes up is Kings Cross. I already know I’m looking at Kings Cross so I haven’t gained much. (the fixed map beneath tells me so)

Perhaps you could filter out the main places names. At least in the map view - obviously the satellite view doesn’t give place names.

2 - At really zoomed in levels (say the last 3 or 4 levels of magnification) the number of tags seems to lessen. Perhaps the algorithm could be made a little more sensitive when you’re zoomed in.

Comment by Phil — January 18, 2007 #
[…] Based on their first experiment to Visualizing the Crowd’s “Mental Map” Using Flickr Geotagged Images, Yahoo! Research Berkeley has now introduced their TagMaps toolkit with a sample applications (World Explorer, Night Explorer and Trip Explorer). The size of the tags reflects their importance. The bigger the tag, the more “important” for location and the given zoom level, tag frequency, uniqueness, user identity and social factor. World explorer in Barcelona […]

Pingback by 7.5th Floor » Blog Archive » TagMaps Toolkit — January 18, 2007 #
Hey Phil - good points! As to number 1, true, there is some redundancy, and we considered it; however, the place name tag is still useful as it allows you to get the photos from that location, plus it communicates its importance.

Regrading your second point, you are absolutely right - there is less content in any specific area; if we make the system more sensitive we will be getting a lot of Spam and noise tags. The solution: wait. When more data is available on Flickr, the better results we’ll have zooming in all the way, all over the world!

Comment by Mor — January 18, 2007 #
[…] Yahoo! Research Berkeley » Introducing: World Explorer and TagMaps (tags: flickr Maps photos tags yahoo) Posted by mojodenbow Filed in Techno Mojo […]

Pingback by Techno Mojo » Blog Archive » links for 2007-01-18 — January 18, 2007 #
[…] UPDATE, Jan 18th 2007: TagMaps is now live - see this post or go directly to the site!

Pingback by Yahoo! Research Berkeley » Tag Maps: Visualizing the Crowd’s “Mental Map” Using Flickr Geotagged Images — January 18, 2007 #
[…] Yahoo Research’s World Explorer was recently released! The semantic mapping of the world is something i’m very interested in. It overlaps nicely with my goal to bring an added value context and narrative to people out in the world, participating in the everyday. […]

Pingback by See a Puffin Eat a Fish » ZoneMaps — January 18, 2007 #
Mor
thanks for the reply - both are fair points.

As for no.2 - why not have a slider controlling the amount of tags that get displayed? eg display top 5, top 10 or top 20 tags per page etc. That way a user has some control over how much detail (and therefore “noise”) that gets displayed. In amongst the noise, I bet there would also be some really interesting tags that also get displayed.

Comment by Phil — January 19, 2007 #
[…] I built most of the back end for the system and am in charge of the data apis that we uses. If you want to play with this api for yourself I suggest you head over to our Yahoo group. For more info on TagMaps check out the post on the YRB blog. […]

Pingback by The ramblings of a car crazed geek » Blog Archive » TagMaps is live — January 20, 2007 #
Great new toy!

Thanks!

Will this be integrated with Flickr’s mapping feature? It seems to only pull my previously/independently geotagged images, which I stopped tagging when the mapping feature was released.

Comment by j david — January 22, 2007 #
[…] Yahoo! Research Berkeley is datamining the 10 million+ geotagged flickr photos (all available in GeoRSS btw), and particularly deriving meaning from the association of geotags and folksonomic tags. Particular words become associated with particular places, and that’s interesting and potentially useful. Yahoo explains it better. […]

Pingback by GeoRSS blog » Blog Archive » Yahoo! Research releases TagMaps/WorldExplorer, with GeoRSS I/O — January 23, 2007 #
Hey David - thanks. We’re pulling selected photos from Flickr, but it doesn’t have to do with the upload time. So, keep geotagging your photos!

Comment by Mor — January 23, 2007 #
[…] Yahoo Research is going in interesting directions with datamining the relationship between geo and folksonomic tags. And Dan Catt hints at some future direction visualizing along the time dimension as well. 10 million plus photos with location, with time, associated with free form words. There’s definitely some meaning lurking in this folksonomy. […]

Pingback by Brain Off » Datamining Folksonomy — January 25, 2007 #
[…] Yahoo! Research Berkeley hat ein neues interessantes Feature gebastelt, das die “geotagged photos” und die Tags, die mit diesen Bildern verwendet werden, nutzt, um die Welt durch die Augen der Flickr User zu entdecken. Kurz zusammengefasst geht es um folgendes: Can we automatically extract information from Flickr geotagged images to create a rich visualization of the world we live in? The answer is: you bet. […]

Pingback by dealicious » Yahoo Mashup World Explorer - die Welt durch die Augen der Flickr User — January 28, 2007 #
[…] Yahoo! Research Berkeley is datamining the 10 million+ geotagged flickr photos (all available in GeoRSS btw), and particularly deriving meaning from the association of geotags and folksonomic tags. Particular words become associated with particular places, and that’s interesting and potentially useful. Yahoo explains it better. […]

Pingback by Blog Mann » Yahoo! Research releases TagMaps/WorldExplorer, with GeoRSS I/O — April 26, 2007 #
[…] The Yahoo Research Berkeley blog goes into more detail on aspects of World Explorer in Introducing: World Explorer and TagMaps […]

Pingback by Exploring Yahoo’s Photosharing Applications - SEO by the SEA — July 1, 2007 #

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