Panoramio's Blog


Explore more with User Photos in Street View

February 26th, 2009 by Eduardo Manchón

Starting today, a new feature lets you browse popular user-contributed photos from Panoramio at major landmarks around the world. The many people who virtually visit Paris to see the famous Eiffel Tower or the Notre Dame cathedral in Street View can now also browse the wide array of user photos taken in the vicinity. Just look for photo thumbnails at the top right of the Street View image, and click to view. You can also connect directly to the community behind this great photo content - a link to the author’s Panoramio page is shown with every user photo.

Notre Dame

The feature is available in many other places too: New York, San Francisco, Rome, Tokyo, Barcelona, Sydney and New Zealand, to name just a few. Anywhere, really, where Street View is available and where users have contributed lots of high-quality photos; of course, this usually is near famous landmarks but you never know where you’ll discover more to see. With user-contributed photos you can inspect architectural details and close-up quirks, or see what is happening at a place at more than one time of day, or see whatever else it was that inspired the photographer to press the button. Take a look at this video to see more:

If you are a Panoramio user, you may already have a photo in Street View. If not, what are you waiting for? Just contribute your best photos to Panoramio and remember to geo-tag them. Google’s image-matching algorithms will analyze them at some point to see if they are also a good match for a Street View location. At the most famous places in the world, competition for space is already tough — take a look at the range of images of the Sagrada Familia — but on less travelled roads the world is still largely a blank canvas. Please help to fill it in!

Posted by Frederik Schaffalitzky, Software Engineer, Google Zurich


9 Responses to “Explore more with User Photos in Street View”  

  1. 1 Ian

    Great work, looks like a nice new feature, I’ll have to try it out.

  2. 2 SteveT

    It seems so far only available on Google Maps and not yet implemented on Google Earth.

    Stephen

  3. 3 CMCarroll

    I checked two dozen locations in G-Maps with Street View, where I have shots. Only one had a Pano posted shot option. However, none were famous locations, say Disney World, Hollywood, Barcelona, or Paris.

  4. 4 Wallaseyan

    Seems to work very well. The ‘blink’ feature - after you have selected a photo, is a little distracting, I love the ‘roll-out’ of teh images from the deck.

  5. 5 Br. Casimiro Kuypers

    A sugestion and a personal profile (just a little) I am a Dutchman, 81 years of age, living in Brasil, but from 1971 to 1975 I have worked in former Dutch Guinea, nowadays part of Indonesia, under the latest name of PAPUA. I am sending a lot of pictures about those days and I have discovered, that some places can be found very well, such as Jayapura and Enarotali. Others, however, are rather weak, such as the main place in the Central Highlands: WAMENA. Yesterday I have written about the wrong place of the name SENTANI.
    A place of interest which deserves its name mentioned is ILAGA, somewhere in the high mountains. EPOUTO on the Tigi lake cannot be found. It is a wellknown station over there.
    Hoping these remarks can be useful, sincerely yours Br. Casimiro Kuypers

  6. 6 Marissa Maloney

    I love that video that was awesome and i hope i could uses it soon and have a nice day

  7. 7 mikey

    That is a very delicate use of the F-stop. I appreciate good camera work in the new age of digital photography. Keep up the good work and see u soon.

  8. 8 Fredrik

    Hi,

    Panoramia is great feature. But, have you, the contributors, read the terms of service?

    I cannot accept signing away all rights and abilities to use my own photos by simply giving a free copy of it to Google.

    Anyone sharing their own work should - obviously - retain rights to their own creative material, unless somehow compensated for the transfer of those rights.

    That i don’t get paid when i upload something to Panoramia i can very easily accept. I can choose to share my photos or not. That i have no rights to use my own work anymore - for any commercial purpose whatsoever - is just plain wrong.

    The terms are not only unfair but a very clear sign of hubris and corporate megalomania at Google, same as it is at Microsoft, Wal-Mart, Bank of America, Exxon-Mobil, and as it was at Enron, and, and and - name any business that is too large or growing too fast - they lost all shreds of humility and humanity.

    I cannot contribute to Panoramia.

  9. 9 Qukuz

    Thank you for the photo of Quku Xinjiang. My birth name is Quku, anyone from the town please make contact. Thanks.

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