Geotagger, or geoTagging, is a technique of adding geographic location metadata to digital media like a video or a geotagged photo or other medium and is an emerging form of geo-spatial metadata. It has a number of applications in the online context as well as in a mobile phone application for instance in mobile mapping, and it has been adopted by Google Maps for use in its Street View feature in its Android smartphone and in the iPad's App Store. The use of GPS (Global Positioning System) has made it possible for users to share information with each other and with the mapping services provided by geotaggers. For this reason, it is used widely and is gaining popularity in the current era.
There are some uses of Geotagger which do not involve the use of GPS but is still being taken up by it with more innovation and advancement. In a nutshell, it includes all the relevant details about a certain point, the location, and a particular landmark or location of that point. These details may be extracted from an image, document or any other form of digital media and then added to a map in a format like latitude, longitude, altitude, speedometer, date and time. Depending on the device used to run Geotagger and the software installed in it, a wide range of options are available for geotags.
Geotags are used extensively by people involved in surveying, mapping and in environmental monitoring. The main advantage of the application is that it provides the user with accurate and precise geographical information. This helps in better understanding of surroundings which are often difficult to visualize with the naked eyes and is used extensively for planning and maintenance of the city's infrastructure. Therefore, it helps in saving a huge amount of money and time in planning for projects.
