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For mobile apple users
International photography company PhotoWeb has realized a technical breakthrough that until now has been beyond the reach of mobile Apple users – the ability to view panoramic virtual tours online.
This is an important development as more and more people are using mobile rather than fixed computers for their web searches. The number of global mobile search devices is predicted to grow to 1.8 billion by 2014 – outstripping the current PC and Mac internet population of 1.4 billion.
With hotel research and booking now done almost entirely on the web, and many people wanting to make informed comparisons and decisions via mobile searches as they travel, accurate and realistic virtual tours of rooms and facilities are increasingly important to PhotoWeb’s hospitality clientele.
But because Apple mobile devices haven’t so far supported Flash, Java or QuickTimeVR – the three popular virtual tour technologies available today – their users have until now been missing out on this functionality.
All that’s now changed, thanks to a recent update to the Safari web browser combined with the innovative new Universal Multimedia Viewer system developed by PhotoWeb. This can identify a mobile Apple user and automatically switch to an HTML5 code to provide full 360 degree viewing. No apps, plug-ins, downloads are needed.
“Our goal is to automatically provide all mobile devices with an image that’s exactly sized and optimized to load quickly and match the resolution of the device” said David Firestone, VP of Sales and Marketing for PhotoWeb. “So the viewer we’ve developed will recognize the device that’s being used, and source an appropriate image from a single high resolution file, using the technology preferred by the device. This means that in addition to supporting the iPad, iPod, iPhone and other small mobile devices, we can also offer optimized viewing in high resolution on larger screens, including a massive 2560 x 1440 view on a 27" Apple iMac.”
As well as displaying virtual tours, PhotoWeb'snew viewer runs video and presents still photos, using three tabs to access all content. It includes a “book now” button that takes users straight into the booking channel, a mapping function that includes the location of the user and the hotel, and a “share” button to link to Facebook, Twitter, Digg, and hundreds of other social media sites.
PhotoWeb's Universal MultiMedia viewer is being implemented on thousands more travel sites and affiliates, including Expedia, Hotels.com, Orbitz, Priceline, Kayak, Yahoo, and Google – allowing? visitors to finally be able to view all rich media content on their mobile devices, before deciding where to book.
PhotoWeb was established in 1996, and recently completed the largest ever hotel photography assignment for the world’s largest hotel group, involving 3,500 IHG (InterContinental Hotels Group) properties. PhotoWeb is in the process of converting all? 40,000+ panoramic images of hotel rooms and facilities held on its servers to the new format that’s viewable on mobile devices.
Source = PhotoWeb
Filed under news, News by on May 7th, 2011. Comment. 
Launched last year, Tour Wrist is a clever interactive app for iPhone and iPad which lets you view a series of beautifully photographed landmarks in 360-degrees. Over 18,000 “tours” across the world are available to explore, from Times Square in New York to the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
Tour Wrist uses what it calls 3D-viewing technology to allow iPhone or iPad users to view tours in ‘immersive’ mode, allowing them to rotate their iOS device in front of them and experience their chosen location as if they were actually there. Or if you prefer, you can simply swipe through the image whichever way you like in 360 degrees and watch the landscape unravel.
[Pic: courtesy of TourWrist.com]
The app works well at capturing sport and music events, including the tour of Jay Z at Coachella (pictured) where you can move through the crowd and back onto the stage, reliving a moment of the gig in a unique way. Sharing experiences with friends may become a big part of the future of the apps’ future, as there are plans to allow iPhone users to capture their own scenes and submit their own virtual tours with the launch of the TourWrist API in June this year.
Tour Wrist lets you easily share your favourite tours with friends on Facebook or Twitter, and each tour also offers handy links through to book flights or hotels nearby the location of the scene you’re viewing.
Those who don’t have an iPhone or iPad can also use Tour Wrist on a laptop or PC – full-screen mode is particularly impressive due to the high-quality images taken by professional photographers. Though we love the abiity to virtually travel anywhere in the world for panoramic views, we're also looking forward to being able to submit our own tours for you to enjoy. Watch this space!
Tour Wrist is free at the app store. Watch the video below to see Tour Wrist in action.
Filed under news by on May 7th, 2011. Comment.
Cave Baredine, the big chamber in Istria
The sightseeing lasts 40 minutes, visitors descend along a 300m long pathway up to 60m below the ground and an underground lake and visit 5 beatifully decorated chambers.
Filed under Collection of the best panoramas by on May 9th, 2011. Comment.
Image via Wikipedia
Virtual tours for your website
Creating your website will require the best of everything. The content of your website is what will draw and keep traffic coming to your site. You will therefore need high quality content which must be presented in the most appealing manner possible. It is worse to have high quality content poorly presented, than having poor quality being well presented. Strong influence on making decision to do business with you or not by everyone who visits your website depends on what you have on your site.
Content in the web is presented in different forms including, pictures, text, videos, a 360 virtual tour and audios. A combination of all these or some of them is what most websites have. Visual content is usually a powerful marketing tool since it allows potential clients to actually see what they are looking to buy. Pictures, videos and panoramic virtual tours are forms of visual content. A virtual tour provider embraces video and still photographs in creating a presentation that gives the impression of walking through a location. The term however more often applies to the use of still pictures in putting together the virtual tour. There is great detail delivered through the presentation and the dynamic display is more interactive as compared to standard photos that may be displayed on the website.
There are certain businesses that need to give a great amount of visual information to potential clients. To deliver marketing messages to clients in industries such as hospitality, real estate and export the use of powerful visual tool is used. However, for a long time still pictures and videos have long been the only option to communicate with the clients. Web content has been improved on the delivery of high quality by the aid of virtual tour. Virtual tour gives your clients a better experiences as compared to showing them photos of your home, hotel or goods. Through specialized software the business owners who decide to go for virtual tour technology find several important benefits.
The inclusion of text information in the presentation allowed by the virtual technology currently is a plus apart from the beauty and greater detail of the presentation. You can include more facts about your location or parts of it by having hotspots. One thing marketing requires is dramatization which cannot be found in standard photographs. Stirring an interest and giving people a reason to follow up is what virtual tour does.
It is definitely easier and cheaper to use standard photographs on your website than virtual tour technology, The angle of how effective each option is, is what businesses should look at. High traffic and higher sales are delivered by virtual tour technology. What every business is looking to achieve, is high returns which may require higher amount of capital investment. Using virtual tour technology is the way to go for those who are not already using it.
articlessurf.com/business/marketing/how-360-panoramic-virtual-tour-technology-beats-normal-photography-hands-down
Filed under 360 virtual tours, Articles by on May 15th, 2011. Comment.
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