Atlas locations are grossly incorrect

[soundsgoodtome 155]

Although I've used Evernote for years, I looked at the Atlas feature tonight for the first time. This was prompted by the new "Places" feature in the iOS app. When I viewed Places on my iPhone and iPad, I noticed many locations (including other countries) that I absolutely have not visited since using Evernote.

 

Then I checked the Atlas on the Mac and found the same issue -- except there are far fewer incorrect places on the Mac than are shown on the iOS devices.

 

Preliminary theory: Quite a few of the incorrectly "placed" notes contain images that were pulled off of the web. Those notes with images are always created on my Mac -- but are synced to my iOS devices. When we create new notes, is it possible that Evernote is puling and using location metadata off of the images, rather than using the location of the iOS device when the note was created?

 

Again what's interesting (or odd) is that Atlas in Evernote Mac (where the image notes are created) only shows a few bogus locations. But the iOS devices (to which the image notes are synced) show literally dozens and dozens of bogus Places.

 

So, the two platforms are parsing locations differently -- and neither is accurate at the moment.

[pgdahl 133]

But your two post on the topic are identical. No need to post twice about the same issue. 

[jefito 5,589]

@pgdahl: you can always report duplicate posts, and a mod will usually delete one of them. Thanks.

[soundsgoodtome 155]

But your two post on the topic are identical. No need to post twice about the same issue.

No, they're not identical; they're similar. And the reason there are two posts is that there are two *issues*: one on the Mac version, and one for the iOS version. The behavior is similar, but the issues are separate. They just happen to be related.

[soundsgoodtome 155]

Although I've used Evernote for years, I looked at the Atlas feature tonight for the first time. This was prompted by the new "Places" feature in the iOS app. When I viewed Places on my iPhone and iPad, I noticed many locations (including other countries) that I absolutely have not visited since using Evernote.

 

Then I checked the Atlas on the Mac and found the same issue -- except there are far fewer incorrect places on the Mac than are shown on the iOS devices.

 

Preliminary theory: Quite a few of the incorrectly "placed" notes contain images that were pulled off of the web. Those notes with images are always created on my Mac -- but are synced to my iOS devices. When we create new notes, is it possible that Evernote is puling and using location metadata off of the images, rather than using the location of the iOS device when the note was created?

 

Again what's interesting (or odd) is that Atlas in Evernote Mac (where the image notes are created) only shows a few bogus locations. But the iOS devices (to which the image notes are synced) show literally dozens and dozens of bogus Places.

 

So, the two platforms are parsing locations differently -- and neither is accurate at the moment.

 

I've confirmed that in Evernote for Mac, the notes whose locations are being misreported contain images that were pulled from the web and that Evernote is using location info that's embedded within the images to set the location of the note.

 

In one case, I had pasted into Evernote a photo from the web site of a friend who now lives in Ottawa (a city to which I've never been.) Tonight, upon inspecting that note, I see that not only does it show the city where the photo was taken, it literally shows his exact address — which obviously was embedded within the photo.

 

My present concern is not the privacy implications of location data within photos. My only concern is that, for the way I work, I'd prefer that Evernote assign location based upon were the notes were created, rather than where the images were taken. Of course, I certainly can see how the latter would be useful to some users — and perhaps even to myself, under special circumstances. But not presently.

 

Suggestion: On the atlas-view page, perhaps there could be a toggle that lets us choose between the two ways of aggregating the data. (Note: The latter will probably never be 100% accurate, because people use different types of cameras, or perhaps they remove the data, which is of course their right. Although I have thousands of images, only about 40 or 50 (estimated) are displaying incorrect locations. I'm positive that I have other images from around the world — but presumably those images simply don't contain their location data.)

 

Finally, the perceived discrepancy I mentioned between the Mac and iOS apps seems to stem from the way Evernote Mac initially displays a zoomed-out map which omits quite a few locations. In my case, the zoomed-out map doesn't show any notes located in Canada at all. Nor in Chicago, for example. On my atlas display, there's one pin vaguely near NYC and another vaguely near Atlanta. But when you zoom in — even just one level — suddenly there are notes in Canada and Chicago and Ohio and Texas, etc. (but only one pin for Canada at that level; another click or two then shows multiple locations in Canada). So the method of displaying locations, depending upon the zoom level, can be deceiving.

 

Conversely, in the iOS apps', notes are broken down into very discreet locations (not clumped into large regions) which gave me the impression that many more note locations were "wrong" in the iOS apps than were "wrong" in the Mac app. In reality it seems these particular images' locations are taking precedent on all devices, but are simply displayed differently on the Mac (initially).

 

I love the idea of the Atlas/Places features! Hopefully they can be tweaked in such a way that they're more consistent.

 

In the Mac version, when zoomed out, I'd prefer to see more flags — even if they have to overlap — rather than lumping together the entire eastern half of the US and southeastern Canada into essentially two flags. I fully get that you have to display fewer flags when zoomed out. But presently, there are so few that the impression is that the app is simply inaccurate. For example, when zoomed out, it's OK if the Canada flag overlaps the NYC flag (or whatever). I'd rather see a somewhat more accurate "average" number of flags than the current one.  :-)

 

And I suspect it's unclear to many users that location data parsed from images precludes the location of the user when the note was created — especially since many images won't have imbedded locations anyway. As such, a view toggle would be awesome.

 

Thanks.

[pgdahl 133]

 

But your two post on the topic are identical. No need to post twice about the same issue.

No, they're not identical; they're similar. And the reason there are two posts is that there are two *issues*: one on the Mac version, and one for the iOS version. The behavior is similar, but the issues are separate. They just happen to be related.

 

 

No, they're identical. It's the same issue afflicting both devices. And as I probably mentioned in my other post, Evernote blames Apple for this.

[Basta 2]

Browncoat is exactly the type of poster that I talk about here: 

 

http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/51728-connecting-notes-to-geographical-locations-through-atlas/

 

He is what I refer to as an Evernote Theologian.  No, let's not talk about obvious problems that afflict Atlas… Let's quibble over whether this is a similar or identical post to another complaint against the O'Holy Evernote.  

 

I love Evernote, but recoil from such dogmatic defenses to our beloved Evernote.    

 

Give me a break.  The problem is that Atlas is poorly designed, rigid and practically useless for many users--Including me.  You can't even change the name of the town when Atlas misplaces where you created the note.  This should have been handled well before it went live. It seems to me that Evernote thought that there would be enough developers out there to take Atlas and make it useful.  There aren't, so now we have a useless program that portends greatness but stews in mediocrity. 

 

I have yet to see one post about Atlas that raves about how great and user friendly it is… 

 

-DH

[Basta 2]

Oops.  I meant pgdahl. LOL.  

[jbenson2 2,147]

Basta,

Many of us recognize that the Atlas program is not ready for prime time and still requires a lot more work.

 

But this is just a user forum, so all we're doing is sharing the issue with other users.

Occasionally an Evernote staff member drops in and might see a few comments, but there is no guarantee it will be moved up the Evernote decision tree. Over the past year, I've noticed several regular forum users who have dropped out of this forum. Personally, I have better success bringing issues to Evernote's attention by using the Support Request (the General Comments / Feedback option).

[Jackolicious 808]

I'm still here and taking feedback All of the discussion is appreciated!

[jefito 5,589]

Browncoat is exactly the type of poster that I talk about here: 

 

http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/51728-connecting-notes-to-geographical-locations-through-atlas/

 

He is what I refer to as an Evernote Theologian.  No, let's not talk about obvious problems that afflict Atlas… Let's quibble over whether this is a similar or identical post to another complaint against the O'Holy Evernote.  

 

I love Evernote, but recoil from such dogmatic defenses to our beloved Evernote.

pgdahl was trying to help keep the forum somewhat more usable as a reference by trying to making sure that identical issues are removed. Generally speaking, that's a Good Thing, but it may not fit in all cases (this one, perhaps). It's an aspect of forum life that has very little to do with Evernote the software product, or anyone's beliefs about its usability, correctness, underlying philosophy, the design of the particular Atlas feature or anything like that. It's purely a forum matter; if no forum maintenance were done, then you'd have spam (lots of it!), forums posts duplicated for no good reason, more interminable wrangling and all of the attendant ills of unmoderated/uncurated forums. Frankly, in my role as a moderator and a forum user, I'd welcome more of this kind of awareness.

I'd also welcome more participation by Evernote folks like Jack, among others.

[Jackolicious 808]

Let's keep this thread on track. Thanks again everyone.

[pgdahl 133]

Browncoat is exactly the type of poster that I talk about here: 

 

http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/51728-connecting-notes-to-geographical-locations-through-atlas/

 

He is what I refer to as an Evernote Theologian.  No, let's not talk about obvious problems that afflict Atlas… Let's quibble over whether this is a similar or identical post to another complaint against the O'Holy Evernote.  

 

I love Evernote, but recoil from such dogmatic defenses to our beloved Evernote.    

 

Give me a break.  The problem is that Atlas is poorly designed, rigid and practically useless for many users--Including me.  You can't even change the name of the town when Atlas misplaces where you created the note.  This should have been handled well before it went live. It seems to me that Evernote thought that there would be enough developers out there to take Atlas and make it useful.  There aren't, so now we have a useless program that portends greatness but stews in mediocrity. 

 

I have yet to see one post about Atlas that raves about how great and user friendly it is… 

 

-DH

 

You should read some more of my posts before accusing me for defending Evernote. Also, I responded to the issue in the other post you made by accusing them for not owning up to the mess that Atlas is by blaming Apple. For the reasons megsaint aptly pointed out, having two separate threads about the same issue is just silly. Were I a forum moderator, I would have closed this thread promptly, but it seems it has not occured to anyone to do so.