Google announced the launch of a new site called Views to showcase users’ photo spheres that are shared to Google Maps. Users’ Views pages will let people browse the photos and plot them on the earth via Google Maps so people can quickly see where they were taken.
Google is constantly updating its Street View imagery to be more comprehensive, and with photo spheres, which are simply 360º panoramas (not unlike Street View shots) that can be taken with Android phones (4.2+), Google can greatly enhance the available imagery in Google Maps even more by way of crowdsourcing.
You can also use a DSLR camera.
This is what a user’s Views page looks like:
“Since Views also incorporates the Street View Gallery, you can check out incredible panoramas of our most popular Street View collections, from the Grand Canyon to the Swiss Alps,” notes Google Maps and Photo Sphere product manager Evan Rapoport. “Just click on ‘Explore’ at the top of the Views site to browse a map of these special collections right alongside community-contributed photo spheres.”
To upload the photo spheres, sign into the Views site with your Google account, click the blue camera button on the top right of the page, and import. You can also upload them to Views from Gallery in Android when you tap “Share” and select Google Maps.