ViewAt.org was born with the idea of creating a virtual space where anyone can contribute their own photographic work in panoramic format and relate them to the place where they were taken.Two Spanish, graphic design studios have provided panographers all over the world with a platform to show their photos in 360º on a webpage. The page http://www.viewat.org has, in the short space of one month, managed to get the approval of 455 registered user from various countries who have signed up and brought us closer to 425 spectacular landscapes and seascapes from all over the world. Since september first until today the site had 138.000 visits and 436.000 pages have been visited.These photographs are located geographically thanks to Google Earth and Google Maps.
What this web page aims to do is bring web users closer to virtually real spaces since, unlike a traditional photograph, a panoramic image has a wrap around effect, which is exploited to the full thanks mainly to Flashplayer and Flash Panoramas. More precisely, the creator of Flash Panoramas, Denis V. Chumakov, has given his support to the viewAt.org team since he knew about the project, practically since the very beginning in the Beta version stage.
go to viewAt.orgBut, above all, what viewAt.org aims to do is familiarise a wider public, in this case the community of world panographers, with rapidly advancing technologies, which means the use of increasingly complicated tools. So that this does not become an insuperable and disconcerting obstacle, viewAt.org allows all those who are interested to show their panoramic photographs in a spectacular but simple format. To do this, all you need to do is sign up and the whole process is free. With viewAt.org, panoramas can be incorporated to other web pages, which means that any blog or website that wishes to insert an uploaded panorama from viewAt.org can do so by using a simple html code.
The authors of the panoramas can decide at the time of uploading if they wish to give their permission for their panoramas to be published on other blogs and even decide which websites may do so and which may not, by using a system of IPs. Obviously the author, with the title that he/she has given, signs the photographs. The author’s rights to each panorama belong to the creator of the photograph and his/her name is always included.
The website visitors has the possibility to rate the individual panoramas, choose the most rated, while the authors will appear as top rated or most active.
On a programming level, in order to manage hundreds of registered users and their possible contributions, a set of formulae has been designed as clearly as possible and easy to follow. The most complex challenge was to set up a system for creating panoramas so that it could be simple and effective.
A few thousand lines of PHP sustain the internal heart of viewAt.org. Also, all the data of the panoramas and the registers are constantly updated thanks to mySol database.
The programs to set up the panoramas have mainly been Ptmac. For retouching, Photoshop CS2 and CS3 have been used.
One of the latest innovations has been the use of smaller icons from Google Maps so as to locate the panoramas more easily. Updating to Flash Panoramas 2.2 has also been an important step and enables the user to upload panoramas with QuickTime player to be able to share them on viewAt.org. This option is still in the Beta phase and is currently available only in spherical format.
"For the one month that it has been up and running, viewAt.org has had fantastic international acclaim. It has had 65,197 hits and 197,217 pages have been visited with an average of three pages per visit. At the moment they had visited us 154 countries." tells us Bernard Custard.
go to viewAt.orgBy googling viewAt.org, we get 112,000 references, opinions and links. Acceptance by the web community has been overwhelming.
Some quotes:
“I want to see panoramic photographs from all over the world. Are you with me on that? If so, visit today’s Cool Site. You’ll be impressed by the quality of these panoramas. I sure was. They’re also fun to explore. Tools let you scroll around photographs and zoom in for close-ups”. Source
“ViewAt.org is a website “made in Spain” allowing users to upload their panoramas (complete, without cuts) within Google Maps so as to share them with the rest of the world. The viewAt.org team has designed a reproducer based on spectacular flash so that these photos can be viewed with high quality”. Source
The viewAt.org team is Ibán Borrás, Bernard Custard, Juan Carlos Izquierdo y Rocío Mejías. Their ages range from 33 to 38 and their fields include graphic design, retouching, panoramic photography, web design … From the beginning of the project to it finally seeing the light has taken one year. With viewAt.org, the team has become internationally known and the project has had a great reception. Daily, they receive dozens of e-mails congratulating them on their work and offering them help, for example on translating their web page to other languages free of charge. Currently, translations are being set up in Chinese, Italian and German.
Links:
viewAt.org
Flash Panoramas
Flash Panoramas Blog
Flash Panorama Player
Ptmac
