Photo: Anand Parthasarathy

`LOCATION AWARENESS' TECHNOLOGY: SiRF India vice-president Ochintya Sharma demonstrates how a digital camera with a built-in GPS antenna (arrow) fixes the location of every photograph shot.

Bangalore: "I know I took this picture last year — but where? Does that coconut grove in the background make it Goa or Kerala?" You may soon be able to say goodbye to such confusion, common to both amateur and professional photographers alike.

Indian engineers in Bangalore and Noida have helped SiRF, a U.S. Silicon Valley-based company, develop `location awareness' technologies that help digital cameras to record the precise longitude and latitude of the place where a photo was captured. They have done this by creating a camera plug-in for a tiny antenna that receives location information from the Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite network.

A leading Japanese camera manufacturer has already harnessed the technology to create a rugged location-aware camera, said Ochintya Sharma, SiRF India's Vice President, Engineering, during a special demonstration for The Hindu , arranged during last week's Bangalore IT.in expo. The feature will allow photographers to quickly sort out and find all photos taken, even years apart, at a particular spot and to integrate the information with global map services such as Google Earth. The company, that specialises in silicon chips to fuel GPS applications, has also seen its products used to produce child locator devices - small mobile phone-like products which when carried by or strapped on to children help parents keep an eye on their movements. Such location intelligence has also been integrated with wristwatches , Mr. Sharma added.

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