iPhone: The Missing Manual, 2nd Edition

Geotagging

Mention to a geek that a gadget has both GPS and a camera, and there's only one possible reaction: "Does it do geotagging?"

Geotagging means, "embedding your latitude and longitude information into a photo when you take it." After all, every digital picture you've ever taken comes with its time and date invisibly embedded in its file; why not its location?

So the good news is that the iPhone can geotag every photo you take. How you turn on this feature, though, and how you use this information, is a bit trickier.

The iPhone doesn't geotag your photos unless all of the following conditions are true:

• The location feature on your phone is turned on. On the Home screen, tap Settings→General, and make sure Location Services is turned On.

• The phone knows where it is. If you're indoors, for example, then the GPS chip in the iPhone 3G probably can't get a fix on the satellites overhead. And if you're not near cellular towers or Wi-Fi base stations, then even the pseudo-GPS of the original and 3G iPhones may not be able to triangulate your location.

• You've given permission. The first time you use the iPhone's camera (or the first time after you've installed the iPhone 2.0 software), a peculiar message appears: "'Camera' would like to use your current location." What it really means is, "Do you want me to geotag your pictures?"

  If you tap OK, then the iPhone's geographical coordinates will be embedded in each photo you take.

OK, so suppose all of this is true, and the geotagging feature ...