The FotoTagger Image Annotation Tool Now Supports Flickr for Photo Sharing

August 25, 2006. Ashburn, VA, USA

Cogitum LC, a provider of software for personal content management, has released the new version of FotoTagger (http://www.fototagger.com), a desktop image annotation tool for adding easy-to-hide notes to pictures.

With FotoTagger users can manage vast libraries of digital images, and specifically digital photographs, more effectively. Every regular user of a digital camera faces the problem of forgetting valuable information about people or objects captured on an image. FotoTagger eliminates this problem by allowing users to place on an image location-specific annotation notes that point to people or other elements. Notes could contain names of people, texts with Web links to convey historical or cultural background, explanation comments, translations of inscriptions, and more.

An example of annotation notes that can be added to travel photos can be found by following this link: anotated travel photos.

FotoTagger is about storing all important textual information together with an image as a single entity. The product works with JPEG files and stores annotation in the metadata section of a JPEG file. This ability provides the following four opportunities. First, annotation notes can be edited at any time after the image is saved. Second, it allows a user to hide annotation notes in a click to view an original picture so there is no risk to spoil original images by embedding annotation that could not be eliminated. Third, this capability lets users search across textual notes. Finally, since annotation notes are stored in the same file they cannot be lost when sharing or moving a picture.

Leonid Malkov, President of Cogitum LC, said, "Integrating different information medias into the one starts as a technological change, but often leads to a cultural revolution. The best example is adding sound to silent movies that created a totally new phenomenon in early 20th century. FotoTagger integrates digital image and text giving users an opportunity to transform photographs from collection of pixels into recorded impressions."

FotoTagger provides effective tools for sharing annotated images, starting from sending the pictures by email in one click and HTML publishing to using blogs and special sharing services, namely Flickr. Currently FotoTagger has specific support for:

• Flickr. The latest version of FotoTagger allows a user to upload an image annotated with FotoTagger to a Flickr account and seamlessly convert FotoTagger annotation to Flickr notes. Similarly, an image can be downloaded from a Flickr account back to FotoTagger while all Flickr notes will be preserved and transformed to FotoTagger annotation. This new feature enables bloggers who like to store photos in Flickr to use FotoTagger as a common platform that enables them to annotate pictures on a local computer and then publish them both to a blog and Flickr account.
• Blogs. With FotoTagger user can publish annotated pictures to Blogger.com and LiveJournal.
• Web. An annotated picture can be converted to an HTML pages for publishing in the Web. Similarly, it can be merged with annotation notes and sent by email so other users will be able to view annotation without having to install FotoTagger.

The previous version of FotoTagger proved to be very useful for tens of thousands users, including travel photographers, genealogy researchers, family historians, and art history researchers. They use an ability to integrate image and text in order to make pictures more informative.

Cogitum LC developed an open XML-based standard for storing and visualizing annotation notes. The standard is based on the existing standards for digital images.

The current personal version of FotoTagger supports what could be called "3F principle" F1: Free of charge; F2: Free of ads; F3: Free of spyware and privacy intrusion.

FotoTagger can be downloaded from the official product Website.

About Cogitum LC
Cogitum is an innovative software developing company with several award-winning personal software tools, including Co-Tracker and Co-Citer that gained total hundreds of thousands downloads.