via londonist.com

The picture above represents the most photographed areas of London, based on the geotagging data found on images in Flickr and Picasa. (More here.)

Now, we have to introduce some caveats here. This image is shaped by the combination of people who have cameras that automatically geotag photos, and those who can be bothered to do it later. But, given the density and distribution, I think it's pretty accurate.

And this is something the archiving nerd in me finds interesting. Here, a whole agglomeration of data (or photos, if you like) has been used to create something else simply through analysis of the metadata associated with them.

We geeks get excited about tagging the things we create - but my experience suggests that explicit tagging (where people choose to apply the metadata) is a minority support at best. Automated tagging, where metadata is applied at the moment of creation (like geotagging) or as the image passes through software (face recognition)opens up far more opportunity for us to analyse and understand the world, through our join creative endeavours.

Isn't that cool? :)