Categories: Mobile

Anyone can add 360-degree panoramas to Google Maps with Android 4.2’s new Photo Sphere feature

One of the most exciting feature announcements to come from yesterday’s Android 4.2 launch and Google’s new suite of Nexus devices is Photo Sphere, a feature that enables anyone to capture full 360-degree panoramas intuitively, which can then to added to Google Maps.

“Inspired by Street View”, Android 4.2 Jelly Bean’s new Camera app allows users to photograph an entire scene in every direction to create a 360-degree “immersive experience”. The images, or Photo Spheres, are stored as JPEGs and all the extra information required to view them in 360-degree format is stored as XML data attached to the images themselves.

Photo Spheres can be emailed and posted on Google+, but perhaps most importantly can be added to Google Maps to help make it more comprehensive and “enable other travelers to get an accurate preview of a location before they arrive”.

Blue circle icons denote user-contributed Photo Spheres on Google Maps for desktop only.

Albizu Garcia

Albizu Garcia is the Co-Founder and CEO of Gain -- a marketing technology company that automates the social media and content publishing workflow for agencies and social media managers, their clients and anyone working in teams.

Recent Posts

Humanoid robots for sale in 2 years, AI smarter than all humanity collectively in 5: Musk to WEF

Humanoid robots will go on sale in two years, and in five years AI will…

1 day ago

Larry Fink promotes ‘A Spirit of Dialogue’ in Davos, WEF restricts replies on X

The WEF neither restored trust nor acted in a spirit of dialogue: perspective When Larry…

1 day ago

Satellites That Think for Themselves: How CATALYST Is Bringing Real-Time Image Processing to Orbit

For decades,satellites have had a simple job: take pictures, send them back to Earth, and…

2 days ago

Vikas Basra takes the helm at the only AI-powered engineering workbench for enterprise 

At the end of 2025, McKinsey published a summary of the biggest AI adoption trends…

2 days ago

The question isn’t whether AI will replace creativity, it’s how it will expand it (Brains Byte Back Podcast)

Will AI scale creativity or stifle it? A CEO’s take on AI and the future…

3 days ago

AI-powered industrial maintenance company closes $35M round with Riverwood Capital

Fracttal, a leading cloud-based platform that integrates asset management software, IoT, and AI, announced today…

3 days ago