Have a "look around" with Panoramio

Henrik Stewenius, Software Engineer, Google Zurich

Have you ever looked at a photo and wondered what was beyond its edges - just what was left of that castle or what the facade of Notre Dame looks like from close up? We certainly have, which is why I'm happy to tell you about a new feature we've just introduced for Panoramio, Google's site for sharing geo-tagged photos.

Panoramio enables photographers to geo-locate, store and organize their photographs and to view those images in their geographic context. You may already have seen photos from the Panoramio layer while zooming around in Google Earth or Google Maps (just click the "more" button), but have you visited the Panoramio website? Now, when browsing photos on the site you can explore multiple images of a particular location in a more seamless way.

For select photos on www.panoramio.com, you'll find a new link below the photo:

When you click it, a pop-up will appear that looks like this:

When you mouse over an image, you'll see polygonal frames appear. Each of these frames represents a photo of the same location taken from a different angle or perspective. Just click on the frame to view that photo, and continue exploring. You can also click the thumbnails on the right-hand panel.

Follow the "Look around" link from this photo of Notre Dame in Paris or St Basil's Cathedral in Moscow to see them from all different angles. Take a look at these beautiful photos of the Astrological Clock in Prague.

We're experimenting with this new feature, so you won't find the "look around" link for all of the over 5 million photos shared in Panoramio. For now you'll find it primarily on photos of popular tourist attractions, but, as with our other tools and services, we plan to keep tinkering with it, so keep an eye out for new developments.