SmugMaps search

DoctorIt

Today, for the first time, while editing the geography for a photo, I actually read the little blurb that says "enter the coordinates so you can search your photos by location!".

Hmmm, I can search by location? Cool! So how does it work? I ask because I concluded it does not seem to work at all. I was tagging a photo from Ithaca, NY, so I went up to the search box, checked off "all smugmug..." and looked for Ithaca NY. I got 150 photos, and my photo wasn't even there. Curiously enough, the first one was another photo from the gallery where my ithaca photo was, and the next one was a photo from another smugmugger at UMass eating a pita.
:scratch

So I searched for Boston, MA. Uh, same list of 150 photos came up.
:scratch x2

OK, it says US address, I'll give it a real address with a zip code. A generic UMass address should work, right? Nope, thinks for a few minutes, gives me the same list.

What is going on?


While I'm on the topic, whats up with the lookup address feature? To edit geography on any of my locations, I have to start in CA, zoom out to the US, drag over the east coast (or wherever), zoom in, and then locate it manually. Fine with me, I like the added feature as that is what it is - added. Its not a necessity, but just wondering why the search seems crippled.

flyingdutchie

DoctorIt wrote:

Today, for the first time, while editing the geography for a photo, I actually read the little blurb that says "enter the coordinates so you can search your photos by location!".

Hmmm, I can search by location? Cool! So how does it work? I ask because I concluded it does not seem to work at all. I was tagging a photo from Ithaca, NY, so I went up to the search box, checked off "all smugmug..." and looked for Ithaca NY. I got 150 photos, and my photo wasn't even there. Curiously enough, the first one was another photo from the gallery where my ithaca photo was, and the next one was a photo from another smugmugger at UMass eating a pita.


So I searched for Boston, MA. Uh, same list of 150 photos came up.
x2

OK, it says US address, I'll give it a real address with a zip code. A generic UMass address should work, right? Nope, thinks for a few minutes, gives me the same list.

What is going on?


While I'm on the topic, whats up with the lookup address feature? To edit geography on any of my locations, I have to start in CA, zoom out to the US, drag over the east coast (or wherever), zoom in, and then locate it manually. Fine with me, I like the added feature as that is what it is - added. Its not a necessity, but just wondering why the search seems crippled.

I have the same experience with Smugmug Maps.

Search, either regular, by keyword or location, does not work at all. I either get a map of the entire USA or i get some location somewhere in California, it seems (without any pics, btw).

Search by user does work correctly, however.

DoctorIt

flyingdutchie wrote:

Search by user does work correctly, however.

I didn't try that one. So you mean, within your own galleries it works?

How 'bout when you are entering the location info? Do you have to do it the same hunt & peck way that I described, do you enter in exact coordinates from a GPS, or does the address lookup work for you?

colourbox

I got real frustrated trying to home in on locations using the smugmug geography page. Andy passed along a tip a while ago to download Google Earth and use that to pinpoint locations. Now it's fun! It's much faster and you can store all your photo coordinates in Google Earth for later reference.

Hint - To copy and paste the coordinates from Google Earth to the smugmug geography location entry page, right-click a place mark, choose Edit, select Advanced, and click the Location tab to reveal the coordinate fields. No more typing.

DoctorIt

colourbox wrote:

I got real frustrated trying to home in on locations using the smugmug geography page. Andy passed along a tip a while ago to download Google Earth and use that to pinpoint locations. Now it's fun! It's much faster and you can store all your photo coordinates in Google Earth for later reference.

Hint - To copy and paste the coordinates from Google Earth to the smugmug geography location entry page, right-click a place mark, choose Edit, select Advanced, and click the Location tab to reveal the coordinate fields. No more typing.

a good suggestion, and one that has only recently become an option for Mac users.

however, the issue at hand remains: whats up with the strange search behavior?

Andy

DoctorIt wrote:

a good suggestion, and one that has only recently become an option for Mac users.

however, the issue at hand remains: whats up with the strange search behavior?

Stay tuned, ok? I'll ask Don when I get a chance.

flyingdutchie

DoctorIt wrote:

I didn't try that one. So you mean, within your own galleries it works?

How 'bout when you are entering the location info? Do you have to do it the same hunt & peck way that I described, do you enter in exact coordinates from a GPS, or does the address lookup work for you?

I'm using Google Earth to find my longitude and latitue coordinates and copy to them to my smugmug pics.

If you go to my www.streetsofboston.com site, you'll see a button for my 'Smugmug Maps'. It issues a URL that causes smugmug-maps to search for user-id. This works fine and searching inside a gallery as well, but these are the only two search-criteria that i could make work. Searching for keywords, etc. did not work at all, not as i expected. I hope this will be fixed sometime (so i can tag certain images across galleries). Or search on both user-id AND keyword (e.g. all my pictures with a given keyword).

DoctorIt

Andy wrote:

Stay tuned, ok? I'll ask Don when I get a chance.

yup, thanks!

flyingdutchie

flyingdutchie wrote:

I'm using Google Earth to find my longitude and latitue coordinates and copy to them to my smugmug pics.

If you go to my www.streetsofboston.com site, you'll see a button for my 'Smugmug Maps'. It issues a URL that causes smugmug-maps to search for user-id. This works fine and searching inside a gallery as well, but these are the only two search-criteria that i could make work. Searching for keywords, etc. did not work at all, not as i expected. I hope this will be fixed sometime (so i can tag certain images across galleries). Or search on both user-id AND keyword (e.g. all my pictures with a given keyword).

Update: Searching for keywords in smugmug-maps works at least a little:
E.g. i did a keyword search for 'sonsie' and it returned a map with a pointer to a picture of the restaurant 'Sonsie' i have. This works fine! A search for 'blizzard' worked as well.

However, and maybe it is because the search words contain spaces, searching for 'saint germain' returns a few pics. None of them are mine. I know i have one too. But maybe i have to type in something else. The space between 'saint' and 'germain' may be a problem. If this is a problem, how do i search for keywords with spaces (or other non-alfanumerical characters)? And how do i search for keywordS.

But still the question remains, how do i search for smugmug-map pictures that are of a given user AND have certain keyword(s)?

DoctorIt

flyingdutchie wrote:

But still the uestion remains, how do i search for smugmug-map pictures that are of a given user AND have certain keyword(s)?

Keywords are one thing, sure. Thats a standard search that just includes photos with geo info.

My take on it was that I could search by "location"... remember that blurb on the page where you enter the coordinates (see my first post)? It really implies, at least to me, that I should be able to enter a "location" and see photos others, or at least I have tagged there or near there. I may definitely be implying too much here, but how cool would it be if you could search for "Boston, MA" and get photos on smugmug that have coordinates in Boston?! I guess I only imply this because on regular google, you type in Boston, MA and its smart enough to offer you a standard map of Boston.

flyingdutchie

Both search for keyword 'boston' and location 'boston, ma' don't work!

DoctorIt wrote:

Keywords are one thing, sure. Thats a standard search that just includes photos with geo info.

My take on it was that I could search by "location"... remember that blurb on the page where you enter the coordinates (see my first post)? It really implies, at least to me, that I should be able to enter a "location" and see photos others, or at least I have tagged there or near there. I may definitely be implying too much here, but how cool would it be if you could search for "Boston, MA" and get photos on smugmug that have coordinates in Boston?! I guess I only imply this because on regular google, you type in Boston, MA and its smart enough to offer you a standard map of Boston.

I tried to do a smugmug-map keyword search with 'boston'. I know i have some mappable images tagged with this keyword, so at least some should show. The smugmug page takes a loooooooooooong time to load and finally it returns an 'empty' map of the entire USA.

Maybe if too many are returned, the smugmug-map search fails?

I wonder, why does keyword search sometimes work (e.g. 'blizzard' and 'sonsie') and sometimes not (e.g. 'boston')?

If i do a search 'all smugmug photos' for location "boston, ma" i get a bunch of pictures in California, some in Washington state, one in Montana, etc... but none anywhere near Boston

If i do a search 'smugmug user>>'="flyingdutchie" for location "boston, ma" i get a zoomed in view of Los Altos, CA... i've never been there... have i ?

DoctorIt

flyingdutchie wrote:

If i do a search 'all smugmug photos' for location "boston, ma" i get a bunch of pictures in California, some in Washington state, one in Montana, etc... but none anywhere near Boston

If i do a search 'smugmug user>>'="flyingdutchie" for location "boston, ma" i get a zoomed in view of Los Altos, CA... i've never been there... have i ?

weird stuff, eh? Weirdest part is, its not consistent between us. We get different results when we do the same search!?

Let's wait to hear from Don or Andy.