Digital Home Thoughts: JOBO AG Launches photoGPS at Photokina 2008

"JOBO AG announces today the availability of the new JOBO photoGPS - a small and lightweight Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver that fits directly on any digital camera's hot shoe, just as if it were a regular flash unit, without the need for extra cables. Through an innovative new capture and process technology, this affordable new device allows automatic geo-tagging by capturing raw GPS data and time which enables new and more efficient ways to organize, search, visualize, and share photo collections."

This looks like a pretty cool device - I've seen small "photo GPS" units, but they tend to be the sort of thing you'd clip to your belt, which is too geeky even for me. Putting it on the camera hotshoe is a great idea, because odds are if you're outdoors (which you'd need to be to get a GPS signal) you'll be shooting with natural light. It's too bad that there's a different workflow to get the GPS coordinates into the photos - it would be great to see support for connecting the GPS unit directly to Lightroom for instance. The price will be $159 USD, and it's expected to be available in October.