“If they want to cover the whole world, they need to let their users help them,” Ahmed said. Munah Ahmed, 28, says Photo Sphere allows him to capture a 360-degree image of the places he visits and see them just as they were when he was there.Īhmed said that with Photo Sphere, Maldives is showcased with a local’s perspective, not just what you might see in a travel brochure. It looks like the new Google Play Services rolling out today held one more surprise besides hints of Android Device Manager. One user, a surveyor who travels around the country regularly, has been uploading Photo Spheres since the feature first became available in November, and since then, he has posted 70 publicly viewable Photo Spheres. That’s because visitors and residents there have begun to use the Google feature. “So we started really looking at how do we take the technology that we developed in Street View to create these panoramas from individual images and make it available to everyone.”įor instance, Google’s Street View vehicles have yet to reach Maldives, but there are many Photo Sphere images of the small island nation, which is in the middle of the Indian Ocean. “Everywhere we go, people are just wanting more and more coverage,” said Evan Rapoport, the product manager for Photo Spheres. Photo Sphere images can help users get a sense of place. Photo Sphere contributors are making it possible for Google to provide helpful imagery in places Street View has not yet reached. They can also be viewed on Google’s “Views” website. The photos can be seen on Google Maps when users search for a place and select the “photos” option. Google did not disclose how many Photo Sphere images have been submitted or published, but so far there are photos submitted from as far away as North Slope, Alaska, down to the South Pole. The user can then view the 360-degree image on the camera before uploading to Google Maps to be shared publicly. To populate the website with images, Google has begun recruiting individuals to contribute, the same way content was built up for online encyclopedia service Wikipedia.įor now, only those with a smartphone running Google’s Jelly Bean 4.2 or higher operating software with the Google camera app can take the pictures, which involves the smartphone user standing in a spot and turning in a full circle while holding the camera. Owners of certain smartphones were able to take Photo Sphere photos starting last November, but Google ramped up the initiative this summer with a new “Views” website where the images can be seen. “Because the photos go through the moderation process before they are even published, I don’t think we have concerns about things slipping through the cracks, and if they do, of course we have the tools that users can use to report issues,” said Sierra Lovelace, a spokeswoman for Google. It’d be up to Google to delete the image. Users can also easily file a report of a photo that may include privacy violations. It has no plans to do so for the Photo Sphere images but said it has put in place a team of moderators to weed out racially derogatory or sexually explicit images.
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