Oh. My. Freaking. Gawd. This is just about the coolest thing I've seen on the web in a long while. These people are using Flickr and another site called Geobloggers to create a searchable database of photographs that are tied to the coordinates on the globe where they were taken. You can go to the Geobloggers site and find a place on the map and search for any photos that were taken in that area. Or conversely, find a photo on Flickr, and click over to the Geoblogger site where it'll show you where that photo was taken.

For instance, I have just Geotagged a photo I took yesterday on the edge of Shellsburg, about half a mile from where I am right now. Go to that photo and click the link under the photo where it says "Geotagged" - you'll be taken to the geobloggers site where it will show you on the map where it is. You can even switch to a satellite photo view of the same spot. holy shit! This is soooo great.

Oh and the funny thing is that one of the main people behind the geobloggers site is named Steeev (with one more 'e' than me).

I looked around at rss feedreading software this morning because it's getting harder and harder to manage all the blogs and other periodically updated sites that i try to look at regularly. At first I found these cool "docklings," software that runs in your MacOS dock and updates automatically, but after wasting time with those I found out eventually that Apple discontinued 3rd party docklings. Stupid.

Anyway, I ended up going with an app called NetNewsWire, the freeware version. Loaded it up with all the blogs and newsites and stuff that I want, and it seems pretty cool. I'm even subscribed to a feed of all my Flickr contacts, so if any of them post a new photo, I'll know about it within the hour.

here's an OPML file (whatever that is) of all my feed subscriptions, if you're interested. It was generated by the netnewswire, and I think a lot of other feedreaders can import them. So if you care about the blogs i read (I don't know why you would, but just in case), or try to read, there ya go.

I love not knowing how this stuff works. I mean, obviously I know, in theory, how it works, and I know I could find out exactly how in detail if I wanted to. But I don't care about the details, and I love just seeing it work and sort of pretending that it's magic. This may be a profoundly un-geeky attitude, but I think I've realized that's how I've always been, even when I was a clueless highschool nerd and thought I wanted to win the Nobel Prize in physics. I've always liked having some things be mysterious and magical. I'm not interested in knowing the inner workings of everything, like I think a lot of geeks are. Maybe that's why I hated engineering school. And yet it suceeded in permanently altering my brain anyway.

Speaking of brains, now what I want is an RSS feed of certain people's minds who don't have blogs and who aren't in touch with me often enough or in detail enough for me to know what the hell is going on in their lives. Like Jon and Jay - can I just wire my newsreader up to your heads somehow? what? why not? I think the NSA makes a chip you can get implanted to do it. C'mon, try it out!