Destinations, The Official Panedia Weblog

Last week Ben Scheirman over at the Flux88 blog did a quick review of an important feature on our Wallpaper site. He noted that we read user information from visitors to wallpaper.panedia.com and customise the site to their needs as best we can.

This feature started as a simple concept that grew to become a very useful aspect of the site. We have plans to further extend this type of functionality over time. Thanks Ben.

Rodrick…or Rick as we call him around here, started shooting for us full time a couple of weeks ago. In that time he’s already added hundreds of panos to Panedia. From Fraser Island to The Melbourne Motor Show and the Melbourne Grand Prix, he’s been very busy.

Rick is a talented still and pano photographer whose work can view viewed on his personal site www.rodrickbond.com. He ’s a graduate of RMIT (Royal Melboure Institute of Technology) with a bachelor of photography. He also builds some very cool stuff, so he’ll be working on R&D for our photographic processes and helping set up systems to make life easier for future photographers.

Contrary to the photo seen here of Rick on Fraser Island, he’s not a crazy homeless man, although Rick might say otherwise. And finally Rick will be blogging here as well, about things that strike his fancy.

Aaron gave me a quick introduction yesterday but I want to expand on that a bit.

I’m the guy that does… lots of things. That’s why we’re having trouble giving me a title I can put on my business cards. I’m a web designer, web developer, programmer, wordpress lover and wrangler, database designer, UI designer, tester, blogger, server admin and bug hunter, it’s hard to put a banner over all of that. For an example of what I’ve worked on so far there’s Panedia’s Wallpaper website which I created from start to finish. There’s this blog too.

As for blogging, I want to primarily write about the things I enjoy reading about at other “business” blogs — my philosophy for writing in general — write for my own taste. When it comes to business blogs, anything behind a product or service, I don’t want to be sold the product, I already like the product, that’s why I’m looking to read more about it at the blog. What I do want to read about is the process, how that product exists and what decisions were made to get there, I want to know about the things you don’t see looking in from the outside.

One of my favourite applications on the Mac, Things has a great example of a product blog. They go into great detail about the motivation and process of new features. One post that particularly stands out was on the creation of the recurring task UI. It includes screenshots of the many layouts they tried before settling on the ideal solution. It’s really interesting stuff that without a blog, you just don’t see.

Aaron and I are constantly going through this process when making decisions and planning new features for the products we work on. The process of making these decisions is extremely interesting to me and so, I’m sure, would be just as interesting to outsiders.

Elsewhere I write, link to and comment on things that interest me at Valhalla Island and I’m a huge Twitter user.

We just updated the Panedia Preview with 20,000 new markers for Accommodation, Food, Attractions… you get the idea. I’ve also been working through my backlog of Panoramas (in my spare time ;) ) and we now have over 1500 panos on the site, with a LOT more still to come. Audio is still seriously lagging, but we’ll get to that.

Click this image for the Panedia Preview.

If you’ve not visited Panedia in the last couple of weeks, we’ve added Canberra (The Nations Capital), Adelaide, Melbourne CBD, Geelong, Robe, Beachport & and some of the Great Ocean Rd – where the weather was unfortunately not kind when I was shooting.

(Note: audio will only be found in Noosa, Alcatraz & Darling Harbour for the moment)

My apologies for the dormant blog, it was set up as a precurser to the main attraction, that attraction just moved one step closer.

May I present a preview of Panedia, with over 700 virtual tours for your viewing pleasure. It’s still very early days with a great deal of functionality & testing to come. I’ll keep you posted as new features are added.

Click the image below and spend some time checking out The Sydney Opera House or Darling Harbour, Brisbane’s South Bank, Noosa, Broken Hill, Melbourne’s Docklands, Alcatraz, San Francisco & Fisherman’s Wharf + plenty more…

Click this image for the Panedia Preview.

You need Flash 9 to see the Virtual Tours in Panedia. We’ll be adding other viewers soon, including hardware accelerated viewing for those who like the ultimate in pano quality.

Let me know what you think of the site. Loves, Hates & want to see’s :)

(Note: audio will only be found in Noosa, Alcatraz & Darling Harbour for the moment)