Prune was originally released in September 2006, but it has taken some time to become known and used. With each version release, the number of downloads has increased, and the positive feedback has grown.
Key to spreading popularity are independent reviews of the program - we didn't ask them to review it, we didn't send them copies (unless asked to), and their reviews and comments are completely unbiased. So thanks to these sites for the publicity and the encouragement!
From August 2007, a short but accurate summary of Prune's features (as of version 3) with good screenshots from a Geography-based blog site.
http://freegeographytools.com/2007/prune-java-based-gps-track-visualization-and-photo-geotagging
As a further result, this article was picked up by slashgeo.org with a short summary "The Free Geography Tools talks about Prune, an open source Java-based GPS track visualization and photo geotagging tool."
From October 2007, a short summary of version 3 of Prune on a personal blog page in French. It criticises the quality of the French texts (rightly) and praises the KMZ export including photo thumbnails. It also mentions the lack of Raw photo support, which isn't something even considered until now.
http://lionel.maraval.club.fr/blogphoto/index.php?2007/10/01/215-logiciels-gps
Pour : vos photos dans Google Earth
Contre : un peu foutraque, ne reconnaît pas les formats Raw
(I'm still not quite sure what "foutraque" means, maybe quirky?
From January 2008, a brief review and an overview of features from a general software and technology site. The same article appears under a host of aliases including informaticsonline, computeractive, activehome, pcw, whatpc, webactivemagazine, and computingbusiness.
http://www.vnunet.com/2207386
Overall rating: four stars out of five
Verdict: An extremely useful utility for anyone with a GPS unit
From February 2008, an updated review for version 4.1 including screenshots, with attention focusing on the photo correlation function.
http://freegeographytools.com/2008/prune-updated-now-with-automated-photo-geotagging-for-windows-mac-and-linux
Again this was picked up by slashgeo.org with the lead-in "The Free Geography Tools website discuss the release of Prune 4.1, an open source GPS tool", and also by technorati.com.
Another one from February 2008, and this time in Italian: http://www.freegis-italia.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=423&Itemid=86
Applicazione per la gestione di dati GPS. Consente, a partire da dati in file di testo o XML, di visualizzarli in modo molto elementare (inclusa la possibilità di visualizzarli come profilo di quota), editarli ed esportarli in formati di testo oppure in XML, GPX, KML/KMZ (Google Earth).
From March 2008, a brief summary of version 4.1 in German: http://www.heise.de/software/download/prune/52244
Somewhat confusingly they include a screengrab from a development version of Prune, which shows a feature not included in version 4.1 (the openstreetmap function).
From March 2008, a short summary in German: http://www.gps-touren.at/pc-software.php?show=1&softwareid=21
Neben ein paar Standardfunktionen wie Tracks verbinden, Waypoints hinzufügen, Daten in verschiedene Formate konvertieren usw. besitzt dieses Programm als kleines Highlight einen 3D Plot der Höhe entlang des Weges. Ausserdem lassen sich Photos anhand der Zeit einem Punkt in der Route zuordnen.
The categorisation of the software is a little confusing, all software is listed as "PC" whether it's just windows or windows/linux/mac, and the licence is given as "freeware" whether it's closed-source or free. The language is also listed as English even though Prune speaks German too.
A blog entry from March 2008: http://akoumjian.blogspot.com/2008/03/easy-photo-geotagging-in-linux-with.html
I tried a LOT of different software, but the one that finally "just worked" was Prune by Activity Workshop. With this JAVA software, I can open a directory of photos, open a GPX file and handpick which waypoints should correlate with which photographs. It also does all of that fancy auto-syncing stuff, if you start to get into that.
A listing in a directory of Linux software: http://linuxlinks.com/Java/Scientific/Other_Sciences/
From May 2008, an announcement of the new features in version 5: http://freegeographytools.com/2008/two-photo-geotagging-briefs.
Sadly, after repeated reminders and questions to the free software foundation's software directory, they still refuse to list Prune, even though Prune is released under the Gnu GPL. We've been exchanging emails on this subject since January but they're still (as of June) unwilling to provide a simple link, without providing a reason why not.