Today Google launched Streetview in Australia, and it is brilliant.  The coverage is simply mind boggling.  Included is every major city or town in the entire country it seems. 

Of course Streetview only shoots from streets at present, so they miss a lot, like Fraser Island, Uluru, National Parks, beaches, trails, mountains, waterfalls, accommodation, tours, shows etc but the vast coverage is great for getting an idea of a place.

In addition to incorporating Streetview scenes into Panedia, we’ll use it extensively to scope out places for high quality photography in cities and towns we’ve not been to before.

For the Streetview launch, Tourism Australia has chosen 8 virtual tours to showcase Streetview Oz.  We have shot all the same places except Perth. So I’ve created a comparison gallery of the best Streetview images as chosen by Tourism Australia and the shots we took at the same place.

High resolution image comparison gallery: http://photos.panedia.com/p616902282

(I have changed the Streetview choices a little to make them match up better with the spot we shot from, but in every case the Streetview quality is the same.)

Surfers Paradise - Streetview

Surfers Paradise - Panedia

Canberra - Streetview

Canberra - Panedia

Alice Springs - Streetview

Alice Springs - Panedia

Sydney - Streetview

Sydney - Panedia
     

Check out all the comparison images in high resolution at our gallery here: http://photos.panedia.com/p616902282

Looking back now, I thought I’d stop and compile a list of the best stuff, and what I think sums up the character of the city. So, if you’ve never been, here’s what you’re missing!

Melbourne is a beautiful city, and has a justified reputation for being one of the world’s most liveable too. Whatever your cup of tea is, be it food or fashion, art or sport, Melbourne has you covered.

Royal Botanic Gardens

The Royal Botanic Gardens is a short stroll from the city and St. Kilda Road, making it a popular spot during lunchtime. On weekends you’ll find joggers, picnickers and people just out for a stroll. The Moonlight Cinema makes for a great night out under the trees in summer.

Birrarung Marr

A relatively recent makeover has turned the area between Federation Square and the Olympic Park sporting complex, now known as Birrarung Marr into a fantastic space containing many art installations, and catering for touring events such as Cirque du Soleil.

Southbank

Southbank lies on the south bank (funny, that) of the Yarra River, and features a promenade lined with cafes and bars, as well as fine dining and retail precincts with specacular views back towards the city. Southbank is also home to the Eureka Tower and Crown Casino.

Federation Square

Though Federation Square was for a long time considered a bit of a white elephant, the city has now embraced it for what it is, a fantastic piece of urban planning that brings together several areas of the city. It is home to the NGV Ian Potter Centre, ACMI and many hugely popular restaurants and bars. Federation square has become a focal point for the city, hosting free public events and acting as a meeting place for Melburnians.

Stay tuned, in the next entry we’ll explore some of Melbourne’s other iconic areas.

-Rick

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 Paradise

When we began planning Panedia Desktop Wallpaper one of the first decisions we made was paid members would be the only user that required sign up, if you want free content, you could get it without barrier. If you have an account, you are a paying customer.

At first the sign up process instinctively included email confirmation for accounts. As internet users we’re highly trained in this procedure — sign up, refresh email, click confirmation link, account activated. As a developer who’s implemented sign up systems multiple times, creating a sign up system around email confirmation wasn’t something I questioned.

Until new users weren’t getting confirmation emails.

We knew this would happen, with spam filters having no reason to trust us, users not checking spam folders, server side filters and plain human error. The best we could do was tell them to check their spam and add the question to the FAQ, I mean, we need email confirmation, right?

Wrong!

Accounts at other online services required email confirmation as a layer of protection against robots signing up for multiple free accounts. We don’t have free accounts, our barrier to robots is money.

We dropped email confirmation, removed an extra step from the cumbersome process of signing up and made our lives easier by not having to deal with lost confirmation emails.

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 take you to the clicked panorama.

Circular Quay, Sydney, Australia. (Mouseover map marker)

When you mouse over a marker on the map, the hotspot in the panorama view will contain a locating arrow and hotspot to show you the approximate position of the panorama you have selected.  At any given time the map contains a lot more markers than the panorama contains hotspots, so there are many more options to view on the map side.

‘Map Site’ button takes you to the Big Maps view. 

On the map side of the screen we have the standard Google Maps zoom control & the option of Map or Satellite view.  We’ve removed Hybrid & Terrain for the moment just to save space.  In addition we’ve added a ‘Map Site’ button.  Clicking this button will take you to the ‘Maps’ site at maps.panedia.com, and centre the big map on the place you’re currently viewing, as seen below:

‘Maps’ View for exploring large areas.

Once in this view, navigation of large areas is easier, as is searching and finding a place to explore….when you’re ready to jump back to the ‘Pano’ view with hotspots, just click on the panorama you want to view (by clicking the map marker), the small panorama will appear as seen here:

Small panorama in ‘Maps’ view. 

To view this panorama in the ‘PANO’ view mode, just select ‘Hotspots’ on the upper right of the small panorama window as shown here: (note the text and positioning of this link is still evolving and may have changed when you view it)

Click ‘Hotspots’ in small panorama window. 

And you will find yourself viewing the full screen panorama with hotspots and small map as so:

‘Pano’ site showing Navigation Panel at the bottom.

The final item to note is the navigation panel at the bottom of the panorama.  You don’t need to use this, but it’s there if you want it.

So there you have the basics of our new site.  Of course it’s much quicker to go to the site and use it for a minute… the site is extremely simple, and a lot of fun.

http://pano.panedia.com

The site is in preview mode, with plenty of items we’re still working on.  Please feel free to comment, let us know what you like and what you don’t…and please let us know if something doesn’t appear to be working right on your system.

Thanks, The Panedia Team.

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 on maps.

Panedia -  Cnr Geary & Stockton St - Union Square, San Francisco.

Differing Markets

So what markets are most suitable for each technology? 

Streetview offers 10’s of thousands of low quality panoramas of a given city/area making it ideal for looking up a particular address to see what it’s like at that spot. The recent mashup of Streetview content on Trulia, a major US realestate site, is an outstanding use of Steetview in this context. 

Travelers though, need to know something about a city before going to Streetview as no one has time to look through 10,000+ panoramas.  Of course you can search for particular places in Google maps and look at them in Streetview, but you still need to know interesting places to search in that city before starting. There is far too much choice to just start clicking randomly on Streetview panoramas.

Panedia on the other hand will offer 100’s to 1000’s of very high quality panoramas of a given city/area.  These panoramas will mainly be shot in areas of interest for travelers.  Therefore the viewer doesn’t need to know anything about a city before discovering amazing places to experience.  On Panedia those places have already been selected and shot by professional photographers. The viewer doesn’t need to open a panorama to find interesting places to see, as each one has a thumbnail image of the best view from that spot….this thumbnail is instantly available on the map, and permanently visible in the thumbnail sidebar. 

Panedia content is not shot from a car, so it can be produced anywhere, allowing travelers to experience places a long way from the road.  From beaches and National Parks, to trails, mountains, waterfalls, accommodation, tours, shows & a lot more.

Conclusion: viewers needing total coverage of a city/place need streetview, viewers looking for high quality imagery or looking for interesting places in cities they don’t know will be better off on Panedia. (Assuming coverage is available)

Other Content Uses

As mentioned already Streetview content is being put to great use by Trulia with a lot more to come no doubt. 

Panedia content can be used online & offline.  The resolution & quality of the master panoramic files is such that they can be used for poster prints, magazine reproduction & billboards.  The can also be used in video up to HD and even cinema resolution. Panedia content is also being used to produce desktop wallpapers at 2560×1600 up to triple monitors. [Link Out Wallpaper.panedia.com]

Final Thoughts

Both Google Streetview & Panedia are amazing examples of what can be accomplished with georeferenced panoramic virtual tours, while they represent the extreme opposites of the spectrum in quality vs quantity.  In a nutshell, Streetview is an engineers system for getting maximum coverage while Panedia is a photographers system for achieving maximum quality.

The best solution for users would be a combination of technologies, offering the huge coverage of Streetview and the amazing quality of Panedia’s everything but street view content.  With the new Streetview API we plan to implement this solution when Google releases their Australian Streetview content, rumoured to be launching mid 2008.

[This is the first in a series of articles comparing some of the panorama/maps sites from the highly biased position of Panedia's lead photographer & owner.]

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.

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 area.

B-52 Bomber Wheel Bay

Members (paid) have access to all wallpapers at all times, plus the master files used to generate the wallpapers. With these files members can cut up their own wallpaper sizes, for up to 4 or 5 monitors. We’re working on tools to enhance this capability in the short to medium term.

Members can also use Panedia Wallpaper as a form of Service, I’ve called it WAAS (Wallpaper As A Service) for want of a better term, whereby they need not horde images on their computers for wallpaper. A member can access the site at any time from any computer and download the exact size image(s) they require. Using the ‘Set As Desktop Background’ function of Internet Explorer, Firefox or Safari the wallpaper image is then set as the computer wallpaper. VERY quick & VERY simple.

Finally there are RSS feeds to the galleries & Free Daily Wallpaper to make grabbing the images you like easy, and we’re in the process of setting up some interesting competitions to allow viewers to win subscriptions and more.

Please have a look at the new site, and let us know what you think of it, as the site will evolve according to the feedback we receive. We’d particularly like to hear from you if you have any difficulty with any part of the site.

Aaron Spence
CEO & Lead Photographer.

the first non-Aaron photo-taking-guy. I also don’t have a title yet. Photographer is OK, it fits the bill, but it seems too mundane for something as outrageously cool as Panedia.

As Aaron said, my background is in commercial photography, and I come to Panedia from RMIT University, where I was a student and more recently the photography department technician. Now THAT was an inadequate job title, I tells ya. Basically I fixed stuff what needed fixin’, and that meant I picked up a few basic engineering and electronics skills along the way, which I will be bringing to Panedia in the form of some cool gadgetry to help future photographers do their job faster and more accurately, as well as my hopefully self-evident photographic talents!

At the moment I’m working on our vast backlog of images from the recent Fraser Island junket/meet-and-greet/Panedia team-building exercise ‘08, polishing them up ready to be put through the Panedia production line.

One of the issues Aaron and I have encountered along the way thus far now that photography is coming in from different streams, is how do you keep things consistent in terms of the overall ‘look’ of the images. As photographers, we all have our own ideas about what constitutes a nice-looking image. It’s open to interpretation at the best of times, but with something like Panedia it is vitally important that the look and feel of the imagery is relatively consistent.

Over the coming months we will be developing a ‘look book’ that contains presets for the basic conditions we will be shooting in, which should lead to being able to shoot in a multitude of different lighting scenarios, and being able to produce a panorama that will not look out-of-place alongside panoramas that have perhaps been shot months ago by a different photographer in different conditions.

So keep an eye out for a bunch of my photography coming online shortly, and I’ll be blogging here about anything that takes my fancy, photography, gadgetry or travel-related.

In the meantime I leave you with a lovely shot of the TSS Maheno wreck on 75 Mile Beach, Fraser Island, QLD. Click through for the pano.

-Rick

flickr stream

what I’m listening to

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.

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.

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 http://twitter.com/jimwhimpey.

We should have hit it a few months ago, when I finished the panos I shot in the Northern Territory, but I haven’t finished them yet. Instead I was at www.easterfest.com.au on the weekend and shot another 75 panos there, taking our total to just over 3000.

So much has been going on over the last couple of months that I can’t begin to explain it all, suffice to say, many new announcements & sites will be forthcoming over the next short while. We also have hundreds more panos in the pipeline, so the 4000 pano milestone will be coming up soon.

Easterfest, Toowoomba

So I continue shooting around the area and then down by the rock wall, when they decide they’ve finished surfing and it’s time to head in. Perfect serendipity, the lead girl is leaving the water just as I’m shooting, creating one of my favourite panos. You can’t see the girls in the thumb, you’ll need to view the pano ;)

Surfer Girl, Noosa

I was also surprised to learn this beautiful building was already 13yrs old. Standing right near it, I figured it was very new, with it’s grand structures and (to me) Asian influences. But that’s the NT, a place chock full of surprises.

Parliament House, Northern Territory

Cradle Moutain Boat Shed Virtual Tour

http://www.panedia.com/map?pano=2634&zoom=2&mt=s

The link posted here is to my favourite pano of the moment. It’s of Uluru (Ayers Rock) and was my submission for the ‘Best Of 2007′ on the World Wide Panorama

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)

Anyone for Champ Car or V8 Supercar racing? The Gold Coast Indy 2007 is running right now, I spent some time on the track yesterday shooting virtual tours. I didn’t have media accreditation so no special behind the scenes shots unfortunately.

See Full Size Google Map with other Virtual Tours - Click Here.