CartaLens…aka…Flickr on Steroids

Today, I sat down for a demo at GEOINT of CartaLens, a just announced collaboration between National Geographic Maps and MetaCarta. Just let your mind wander for a bit…every photo captured by National Geographic photographers becomes geographically referenced. Add to that the functionality of MetaCarta to search, capture and map any references to geographic names and places mentioned within the text of National Geographic Magazine. The companies call it a "geospatial digital asset management solution." I’d call it Flickr on steroids (See photo at right; click for larger image). The companies plan to offer this to anyone but you can image that this would be a great resource for the media, but given that it is being featured at a military and intelligence conference, you might expect that it has applications for researching regions of "interest." As photographers carry GPS-equipped cameras, it obviously becomes easier to capture content. But the intent is to manage any multimedia image including video and audio. I can see this tool in a variety of applications but the real asset is the incredible photography captured by NGS.