2009 has been an exciting time for Panoramic Earth. the number of 360 images has grown steadily over the past 12 months, as has the number of contributors to the site. Here are some of the achievements of the past year:
- Collection grown to over 4600 panoramas from about 50 countries around the world.
- Over 60 photographers worldwide now contribute to the site.
- Coverage in the UK and Australia continues to grow fast.
- Breaking ground to cover more countries, with images from India and China and USA being added.
- Consistently ranked among the top 100,000 sites in both the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore according to Alexa.
- Introduction of the tag cloud, allowing photographers to better promote their images.
- Nearly 200 regional tours embedded in other websites using Panoramic Earth images.
But, we will not rest there. A lot of things on the net have changed since Panoramic Earth was first launched, bringing in advances like new Flash panoramas viewers, changes to Google maps and ability to embed content in other websites. In the next year we hope to see:
- Collection grow to about 10,000 panoramas.
- Launch a brand new site design with more features, bells and whistles
- Introduce new panorama viewer, allowing both spherical and high resolution images to be displayed.
- Allow embedding of individual images into other sites
- Simplify uploading process and access to other languages
- Addition of forums, various article pages and photographers directory.
So, 2010 promises to be busy, full of challenges and potential. We look forward to seeing what exciting places people photograph, and wish all our members a very Happy New Year for 2010.
