-- Use your camera phone to remember locations, such as where you parked your car, or where you found a great restaurant. By geocoding the picture, you could later browse through photos, identify the location by sight, then have software on your phone pick up the location information and give you turn-by-turn directions to get back.

-- Use your camera phone to communicate locations. Take a picture of the front of a restaurant, then send that photo via text messaging to a friend. Simply type "meet me here!" and the other person's phone could read the geotag of the photo to receive turn-by-turn directions.

-- Send postcards that automatically place themselves on a map. Everyone likes to share travel stories and photos. Geocoded vacation snaps would let software automatically place them on an online map. Isn't this how you'd like to share your vacation snaps?

-- Upload pictures to your GPS, and have them autoassociated with waypoints. That way, you can choose common locations, such as "home," by simply selecting one of the photos on your device, which is faster and safer than typing in an address.

Camera phones that automatically geotag photos -- as well as other cool and related products like digital cameras that geotag, GPS devices that take geotagged pictures and others -- are coming to a pocket near you. First they'll show up in the high-end, "prosumer" market, and be used by gadget freaks, camera nerds and geocaching types. But soon enough, geotagging functionality will become standard fare in most cameras.