![\"\"](\"http:\/\/trillworks.com\/nick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/gplus2.png\" "\\"google")
<\/p>\nOne of Google+’s much touted features is its ability to automatically slurp photos off of your mobile phone. I’m a big fan of this functionality. It represents a marked improvement in user experience over Facebook. It’s silly that we waste so much time dragging and dropping image files.<\/p>\n
Before taking advantage of automatic uploads, users should be aware of some other less obvious features. When viewing a photo, click Actions->Photo Details and you’ll be presented with some neat data:<\/p>\n
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I assume this information is pulled straight from the EXIF metadata embedded in the image file from the phone. That’s handy, although I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to get out of the histogram. If you click “Location”, you’ll see something even more interesting.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/trillworks.com\/nick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/gplus3.png\" "\\"google")
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That’s almost exactly where I took the picture. Awesome!
\nBut very close to my apartment. Creepy!<\/p>\n
As far as I can tell, control over who sees what is a major selling point of Google+. I know that the information was already in the EXIF data, I gave the Android application permission to access the phone’s GPS, and there was probably a warning in the terms I agreed to. But 99% of people won’t consider any of that when they share an image from a location they would like to keep private.<\/p>\n To be clear, I think this feature is really cool. Google has taken full advantage of geotagging in a way that provides value to end users. People just need to be aware of what exactly they’re sharing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of Google+’s much touted features is its ability to automatically slurp photos off of your mobile phone. I’m a big fan of this functionality. It represents a marked improvement in user experience over Facebook. It’s silly that we waste so much time dragging and dropping image files. Before taking advantage of automatic uploads, users … <\/p>\n
\nThe whole Circles concept seems like a user friendly access management system. So I find it a little surprising that sharing a photo is bound, by default, to share location\u00a0information\u00a0<\/strong>as well.<\/p>\n