Connect Expo 2015
Last week Panedia participated in Connect Expo 2015 trade show that took place in Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. We had an Exhibitor stand in the Virtual Reality area and our CEO Aaron Spence spoke in a couple of seminar sessions. We did around 400 VR demo’s over 2 days on our stand, keeping our seats filled the majority of the time. It was a wonderful experience that enabled us to show the amazing possibilities of VR technology to the public and reward us with their positive reactions. Check out Connect Expo 2015 here...
Gold Coast Bulletin article about Panedia
‘GOLD Coast specialist panoramic film company Panedia is a world beater’ makes the title of an article in our local newspaper. Nice focus for our work that finally gets some local recognition. Check out Panedia at Gold Coast Bulletin – Gold Coast...
Panedia features at the Daily Mail
The Daily Mail published an article on our work: ‘The stunning panoramic pictures taken by an Australian company for Google street view…and they’ve been seen by more than 12 MILLION people’. It is always good see our efforts being recognized. Check out Panedia at Daily Mail here – Daily...
5000+ Mapped Virtual Tours
5052 Virtual Tours are now online at Panedia. I’d been planning to post at 4000, then 4500, but before I’ve had a chance, we’ve hit 5000. I’ve been shooting in Byron Bay, and Sydney. While Rick has been all over the place. Shooting heaps of panos within an hour or 2 of Melbourne. We also have every intersection + a lot more in the Melbourne City Grid, plus we have audio for each panorama there. And we’ve added a new size of panorama to the map…almost double the previous largest size….while we’ve added auto panorama sizing based on your browser window size as well. We’ve also started shooting aerial panoramas in Canberra at the recent Balloon festival. Watch this space, there’s more to come on that subject. I’m off to Sydney again in an hour for the Google Developer day tomorrow, plus I’ll shoot a lot more Sydney for Panedia. I’m planning to shoot northern beaches over the next week. I’m also hoping to attend the Apple store opening on the 19th of June. I’ll leave you with this fireworks pano (complete with audio) from ‘Cracker Night’ at Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast 2 weeks ago. Cracker Night – Surfers...
Introducing Panedia’s Pano Site. (Preview)
Sydney Opera House, Australia. (Hotspots Off) Before we start I’d like to point out the naming convention we’re using for our panorama/mapping sites: http://maps.panedia.com is our ‘MAPS’ site…big map, small panoramas by default. http://pano.panedia.com is our ‘PANO’ site, fullscreen panoramas, dynamic hotspots and small map. Both sites use the same content, albeit in different sizes and formats, but they present the world in a very different way. ‘Maps’ is a top down look at the world, whereas ‘Pano’ is a ground based tour through the world. OK simple explanation over, lets look at the details. Stanley, Tasmania, Australia. (Mouseover Panorama Hotspot) In the Pano site we’ve managed to integrate the panorama and google maps completely. So mousing over a hotspot in the panorama updates the map, while mousing over a marker on the map, updates the panorama. All the hotspots inside the panorama are dynamically generated based on a number of factors in our algorithm. Each hotspot when moused over opens a large thumbnail image of the view from that panorama position. The hotspot window also contains the distance & bearing to that panorama from the one you are in. Of course you can turn the hotspots off an enjoy the view anytime using the ‘Hotspot’ checkbox on the top left of the window. Alice Springs, Northern Territory, Australia. When you mouse over a hotspot in the panorama, the map scrolls or jumps (depends on the distance) to the marker you are viewing. This gives you an aerial view of that location, while the hotspot shows you an image from that location. Clicking the hotspot or map marker will...
Panedia vs Streetview
People familiar with Google’s Streetview, which is basically panoramic virtual tours on maps, would be forgiven for thinking Panedia is just another ‘me too’ effort. Allow me to show you how this is not the case. There are fundamental differences between Streetview & Panedia, which produce vastly different end results. One isn’t better than the other, they are both great technologies, but they both serve very different purposes and potentially different markets. Core Philosophies Google Streetview Goal: Add visuals to maps so people can look around on the ground, enabling greater understanding of a specific location or area. [Link Out] Result: Attach panoramic cameras to cars and drive down all streets in a city taking images. Add panoramas to maps. [Larry Page’s Idea] Panedia Goal:Use Panoramic Virtual Tours to produce the worlds best destination content and create a visual archive of our changing world. Make the content available in as many mediums as possible. Result: Use professional photographers & equipment along with extensive automated workflows to produce some of the most beautiful destination content available. Shooting places of interest & of historical value. Use the content in may ways including adding it to maps for online viewing. Practical Results As you would expect these philosophies lead to very different results where Street View & Panedia overlap, ie on maps. Panedia = Low quantity of extremely high quality panoramic virtual tours on maps.Google Street View = Vast quantity of low quality panoramic virtual tours on maps. Google Streetview – Cnr Geary & Stockton St – Union Square, San Francisco. Panedia = Low quantity of extremely high quality virtual tours...
A Refreshing Take on Usability
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...
3500+ Mapped Virtual Tours
3513 Virtual Tours are now online at Panedia. With hundreds more in the pipeline, 4000 should be coming up soon. I’ve been busy stitching panos from Darwin in the Northern Territory of Australia. Panos I shot back in December that haven’t been prepped until now. Among those panos are amazing huge termite mounds and waterfalls in Litchfield National Park about 90 minutes drive outside of Darwin, & the Aviation Museum near the Darwin Airport. Here’s a view inside the wheel bay of a B-52 bomber at the Aviation Museum. The B-52 is the centerpiece of the museum taking up much of the total floor...
New Panedia People – Rodrick Bond
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...
Hello World, My Name is Jim
Aaron gave me a [quick introduction](http://blog.panedia.com/2008/03/27/new-panedia-people-jim-whimpey/) 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](http://wordpress.org) 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](http://wallpaper.panedia.com/) 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](http://culturedcode.com/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](http://culturedcode.com/things/blog/2008/02/habemus-dialogum-we-have-a-dialog.html). It includes screenshots of the many layouts they tried before settling on the ideal solution. It’s really interesting stuff that without...
New Panedia People – Jim Whimpey
Panedia is growing. In addition to yours truly we now have 3 amazing people working on different aspects of Panedia. I’ll be introducing the team via the blog over the next short while. A couple of the team members will also be blogging here. Jim Whimpey: We’re still working on his official title, but he’s responsible for our websites. He’s also our master of blogging & pano photographer in training, while completing an IT degree at University. If you’re wanting to get to know Jim, his blog is at Valhalla Island, while he tweets at...
Would you like Food with that Pano…
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...
Panedia Preview…
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...
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