New Image Viewer Launches on Gigapan.com

We are proud to announce a newly designed image viewer on gigapan.com. Based on the Seadragon platform, acquired and enhanced by Microsoft, the new viewer is cross browser compatible, working as seamlessly on PCs, Macs and Linux based computers as on Android and iOS. Entirely based on Javascript and AJAX (standard in modern browsers), the viewer no longer requires plugins.

Our focus on the new design has been to highlight the spectacular nature of gigapan imagery and includes a number of updates.

The viewer is now the full width of the page, and taller than before, revealing more of each image and fully immersing guests in the image upon arrival to gigapan.com. In addition, user controls and navigation have been reduced and simplified, making them as unobtrusive as possible while providing the same zoom and full screen options as expected. One can, of course, still use the mouse scroll wheel or laptop trackpad for zooming, and click (and hold) to drag/pan around the image.

Snapshot functionality has also been simplified. It is now easier to identify which snapshots have comments, along with the ability to comment within the snapshot viewer whenever you are signed in. We have also added a new snapshot scroller which is more responsive and can be toggled to hide, allowing our users to experience more of the image.

Finally (for now), we’ve moved the “Explore more” vertical image carousel, which previously featured five related gigapans, to another toggleable option along the footer, bumping the number of related gigapans up to eight.

Check it out at gigapan.com. We truly appreciate your feedback - good or bad - so tell us what you think!

There are many more improvements to come for both our embeddable viewers and the viewer you see on gigapan.com, so stay tuned.

Sharing the Experience

Every time I am out with my EPIC taking a gigapan, I am asked by, and share with others, what I’m doing. They look out with me, see the vista and nod, ooh and ahh over the robotic panohead’s precise movements, and say, “How cool. I’ll check it out,” before heading off. The taking is super cool (especially in the hands of much more talented photographers). However, I am usually left wistfully watching their parting heels, hoping: “Please do! I really hope you check it out”. For me, you see, the magic that goes into a fantastic Gigapan image is revealed when it is shared.

Sharing takes off once you upload an image to gigapan.com. As a logged-in Gigapan Basic member, you facilitate maximum sharing by going to the Edit option found under your image and editing your image’s settings as follows: uncheck “Is private” and check “Allow others to embed this gigapan?”, “Allow others to add this gigapan to galleries?”, and “Allow others to print this gigapan?”.

When your gigapan is public, site visitors can find it using the gigapan.com search. It will appear in the “Most Recent” image listing and, if viewed enough, the “Most Popular”. You can improve your image’s search performance (working toward that most popular ranking) by adding your own tags and selecting relevant categories from your image’s Edit page.

Public gigapans can be socially shared by you and site visitors with friends and connections. When a site visitor clicks on the Share icon she can post your image to Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and more. Some of our most viewed images grew popular after spreading virally through social sharing sites. And, just recently, we introduced the ability to post an image viewer directly onto a person’s Facebook Timeline. Try it; it’s pretty satisfying, especially the full screen view!

Allowing others to embed your gigapan takes sharing to the next level. With this setting enabled, a site visitor can generate, copy, and paste an iFrame embed script into a blog or website he controls so that others see, explore, and zoom in on your image beyond the bounds of gigapan.com. Views of embedded gigapans account for over a fifth of Gigapan image traffic.

Sharing the experience of exploration, discovery, and Wow! that a Gigapan image contains in its billions of pixels expands the view and perspective of every person who lands in the midst of an image. I hope they land on yours! What are some of your favorite shared gigapan experiences?

Gigapan Tag: New Product Update and Name Change

Gigapan is excited to announce the launch of Gigapan Tag (formerly GigaTag), a digital marketing product that allows users to zoom into an HD image, find themselves and friends, tag themselves on Facebook, and take interesting snapshots of the image to share, all of which sends a post to their social timeline. Learn more about Tag in our in our press release.

In addition, Facebook has recently modified their API platform which only allows users to tag themselves. This means that Gigapan Tag users can no longer tag their friends, but they can continue to tag themselves, take snapshots, share the image and encourage their friends to go in and tag themselves. 

All of these changes reflect our continued efforts to improve the brand and customer experience of Gigapan as a whole, so please stay tuned for additional announcements and news!

Questions about Tag? Contact tag@gigapan.com, or post a comment here or in our forum.

Gigapan Captures a World Record Event

On Friday, July 5, 2013, Portland, Oregon beat the previously held Guinness Book of World Records for “Most People in a Floating Line” with 620 people tubing and holding hands on the Willamette River in Downtown Portland. The previous record was 542 people in Italy who set the world record in 2008 for the "World's Longest Floating Chain."

Gigapan photographer, Mike Franz (pictured above on the fireboat), shot this incredible world record image for the organizers of the event, the Human Access Project, a local non-profit which aims to make the Willamette River more accessible to Portland residents.

A Gigatag was also set up and those who attended the event can zoom in and tag themselves: http://www.humanaccessproject.com/events/world_record_float

To learn more about the Human Access Project, visit: www.humanaccessproject.com.

FOCUS : Perspectives Through the Gigapan Lens

Today, Gigapan launches a new feature on the blog called FOCUS, which offers up our point of view on topics ranging from photography and art, to science and philosophy, to pop culture, to business and innovation, and everything in between.

In addition to creating great consumer experiences in the field of panoramic and high-resolution imaging, Gigapan gets really excited by creativity, advancements in technology and science, and diverse opinions that make us - and hopefully our users and readers - think more deeply. In the midst of our individual daily roles at Gigapan, we each have the desire to explore and share our discoveries that inspire wonder, create joy and teach us something new.

With our FOCUS feature, we will shine a light on the innovations, advancements and sometimes quirky happenings that occur every day out in the world. We will also be serving up longer articles relating more specifically to the Gigapan industry, for example how Gigapan photography is changing the way we interact with images, what the implications of this type of image capture has on our society, and the psychology behind our collective obsession with capturing moments and diving so deeply into the results.

We hope you enjoy this feature as we hone in on the world and FOCUS.