kartooner.com

A client of mine recently contacted me in regards to putting “interactive” panoramic videos on their web site, similiar to those typically found on realty sites. The preparation for this kind of job isn’t extraordinary nor is it difficult but it is time consuming and in this instance patience is certainly a virtue.

First, you have to decide whether or not you’ll be using a conventional or digital camera. Depending on what you use, the results will vary in quality clarity, and resolution. Using a tripod is recommended and important in order to line up your photos and measure your shots incrementally.

For 360 degree images, it’s suggested that you take between 12-15 pictures depending on the lens of your camera. The easiest way to accomplish this is to think of the number positions on a clock and take each photo at these positions, similiar to the military technique of plotting points on a landscape.

Each photo should overlap about 15% 33-50% (thanks Erik) and with a decent tripod it’s just a matter of measuring and estimating. Most panoramic software will blend these images seamlessly and allow you to line up (using an onion skin effect) adjacent photos. Sometimes this is referred to as “stitching” and depending on the software you use this is either handled automatically or manually, but you’ll find that no matter how perfect it seems you’ll most likely have to fidget with the photos in order to produce the desired effect.

If you’re savvy enough with Flash and would much rather not purchase off the shelf software, you could always use Actionscript to program a panoramic viewer. For the less technically inclined or for those who have a shorter time frame you’ll find that most panoramic software, like Panorama Factory will output the results in the Quicktime format, which has built in VR capabilities (zoom in, zoom out, pan).

That said, have you ever created panoramic photos and if so, what software did you use?

I’ve always been intrigued by the fantastic. More specifically, movies that explore ideas outside of the box (such as ET and Contact) and allow me as the viewer to also think outside the box. With the mediocre scripts that have been circulating Hollywood coupled with sub-par acting it’s no wonder the production companies are hurting. The material isn’t alive. It doesn’t shout creativity or imagination. Why? The studios are banking the success of a movie based on big name celebrities, hoping they will in fact draw in the crowds rather than focus on writing with substance and production quality material.

E.T. at the time featured a cast of moderately ‘unknowns’ — aside from Peter Coyote and Dee Wallace-Stone — including younger cast members Henry Thomas, Drew Barrymore and Robert MacNaughton. Henry Thomas’ performance was notably excellent because he emoted fear and sadness successfully onscreen, all in front of a mechanical puppet.

I love E.T. and it will remain my all-time favorite film out of every movie I’ve seen in my lifetime. It’s as simple as that without complicating things. The movie is a constant reminder of the special attributes of friendship. Looking past the fact that it was a movie about an alien and his first-hand encounters on Earth you start to peel away at the layers and find something special, almost indescribable and more importantly, heartwarming.

To this day I still see it as one of the pinnacle movies of the early 1980s.

Apparently and unbeknownst to me, I’ve got another site in the Netherlands that looks completely different from this one save for the navigation links.

All kidding aside, I’ve been actually waiting for this to happen. For someone in another country, or even a resident of the US of A to steal something from my site, be it the navigation, the layout, graphics or content. In this case, this unknown person who I gather is from the Netherlands, at least according to their domain appears to have just set up his or her site and in the process they’ve lifted my URLs and navigation.

I’ve seen it happen to Jon Hicks, Paul Scrivens and a variety of other developers (designers, bloggers, whatever you’d like to call them).

Kudos goes to Technorati for showing me that links from this site were being prominently displayed on another domain. I won’t lie and say it doesn’t irk me because to me this is no different than stealing someone’s identity, albeit a milder form of it.