Photo-Sphere
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Google's Photo Sphere app now on iOS and not just Android
Photo Sphere is no longer an Android exclusive. Google released the app for iOS users today, calling it Photo Sphere Camera. It's free, and a nice way to create immersive 360 degree photos. The app is pretty simple to use. Press the start button and the app will prompt you to move by centering a yellow dot that appears on screen. You'll chase the dot in a complete circle. If you like, you can also point up and down to get a full spherical image of your surroundings. Of course, Google would love for you to upload your images to Google Maps where they can be shared with the public. The image will also be saved to your camera roll, but you can't view it that way as a 360 degree sphere. Instead it appears a really wide panorama. You can view your 360 degree images properly in the Google Photo Sphere app. The Photo Sphere views can also be uploaded to the Google Views site, or embedded in a web page. The app works really well. During the stitching mode you'll see a little animated man getting all the seams adjusted to make the image smooth. Of course, there are many iOS apps that will create 360 degree scenes, so Google is a little late to the party. Photosynth from Microsoft has a similar set of features. 360 Panorama (US$0.99) from Occipital also performs well and is popular with the iOS photo community. 360 Panorama allows an easy share via email of your photos that preserves the 360 degree view by giving the recipient a link for Safari. Other popular free spherical photography apps that have been around a while for iOS include Sphere and Bubbli. It's good to have Photo Sphere on iOS. It's free and the image quality is very high. The stitching seemed accurate in my tests, and exposures were adjusted so everything looked quite smooth. The app requires an iPhone 4s or greater and runs on iOS 7 or later.
TourWrist puts a twist on the photo sphere (hands-on video)
You've heard of Instagram, right? Are you familiar with Microsoft's Photosynth and Google's Photo Sphere on Nexus phones and tablets? How about Apple's brilliant continuous-scan panorama mode on iOS devices? Well mash all this up and you get TourWrist, an app / social network for sharing photo spheres. The app started life as a social network for virtual tourism and gained one million users since launching in 2010. Here in Las Vegas, the company just launched the latest version of TourWrist with a focus on capturing photos spheres. Unlike Microsoft's and Google's approach, which stitches 360-degree images from discrete pictures, the app uses continuous-scan like Apple's panorama mode. The resulting photo spheres are truly impressive and look significantly better than the competition, especially when captured in tricky lighting conditions. All 360-degree images can be shared with other TourWrist users, Instagram-style, and with other social networks by linking to an HTML5-compatible viewer. Take a look at our gallery below and peek after the break for our hands-on video and sample photo sphere captured on site.
Android 4.2's Photo Sphere camera takes on iPhone's panorama mode
Android 4.2 is teeming with new features and system improvements, but you can bet that Photo Sphere will be the one that's talked about most amongst consumers. While Android phones on the whole have had panoramic modes for years, Apple's iOS 6 update added even more fuel to that fire. Now, Google's taking things to an entirely new level. With Android 4.2, users can snap pictures in every direction, and the system does the stitching. What you're left with are photos that can be navigated, taking viewers "inside of the scene." Photo Spheres are stored as JPEG files, and all of the information required to view them is embedded as open XML metadata in the image itself. You'll be able to peek 'em on your phone or share them easily through Google+, and perhaps best of all, publish them to Google Maps for the world to see. Head on past the break to see what you've got to look forward to.
Google bumps Android to 4.2, keeps Jelly Bean moniker
Well, it's no Key Lime Pie, but Android 4.2 is certainly a treat in its own right. The latest version of Google's mobile OS makes a number of evolutionary improvements to its already impressive repertoire -- including a new quick settings menu that can be accessed from the notification pull down and support for multiple user profiles. The multiple user support is especially handy for tablets like the new Nexus 10, which are much more likely to be shared, and now offer quick and easy user switching right from the lock screen. If you don't want to share your tablet, just what's on it, the new support for Miracast makes will allow you to wirelessly beam movies, games or anything else to a compatible display. The 10-inch tablet UI has also received a slight tweak, moving closer to the design for phones and the Nexus 7, with centered navigation buttons and the notification area up top. It might seem strange for users used to the Honeycomb-style tablet layout, but the new design is much simpler and provides a consistent experience across devices. Google has also overhauled the photo experience and added Photo Sphere -- a 360-degree panoramic shooting mode that captures everything around you. Obviously, you'll be able to post those shots to Google+, but you'll also be able to add them to Google Maps, basically creating your own personal Street View. Interestingly, Google has also taken a page from Swype's playbook, adding "Gesture Typing" to its keyboard. There's also a new screensaver called Daydream that offers up news, photos and other content when a device is docked or idle. Perhaps the biggest, and creepiest improvements are to Google Now, which can monitor your Gmail for relevant content such as flight numbers. Hotel and restaurant reservations are now presented as cards, as are packages enroute to your humble abode. The service will even remind you of events you've purchased tickets for, essentially making Calendar redundant for a lot of your personal life. For more info check out the source links.
