I’ll be adding these photos to my listings soon – what’s outside the window of the house, what the street looks like, what’s to the left and right … not just because a client mentioned it to me the other day, but also because Google just released Panoramio:
Have you ever looked at a photo and wondered what was beyond its edges – just what was left of that castle or what the facade of Notre Dame looks like from close up? We certainly have, which is why I’m happy to tell you about a new feature we’ve just introduced for Panoramio, Google’s site for sharing geo-tagged photos.
Panoramio enables photographers to geo-locate, store and organize their photographs and to view those images in their geographic context. You may already have seen photos from the Panoramio layer while zooming around in Google Earth or Google Maps (just click the “more” button), but have you visited the Panoramio website? Now, when browsing photos on the site you can explore multiple images of a particular location in a more seamless way.
Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. I only wish we could integrate this into the MLS … but we’re relatively limited in the photos we can upload and then we’d likely run into the “you can’t have your own branding!” issues … Google’s (etc’s) flexibility in this arena may be one of the downfalls of the MLS as we know it. (and that might not be a bad thing)
When you have the photos available on Panaramio, let me know, as I’m curious to see how it works for something as small geographically as house.
Agreed. I think that the concept, if adopted by the MLS, would be even better. I think your system allows unlimited photos, whereas mine allows only 20 … but as I’ve said before, the real challenge won’t be the technical limitations but the politics –
We’ve been working on the “outside the window” issue at CurbPlaces for a bit – we are in the process of rolling out “Street Pictures” – views up and down the street in front of a property rather than the standard realtor-supplied best angle of the front of the house. We figured it would be a while before Google got around to mapping Cville so we thought we’d just do it ourselves. To see them, go to CurbPlaces.com and zoom all the way in. I’d love to hear your reader’s thoughts.