GigaPan - Interactive Panoramic Photo Community

If you like photo sites such as Webshots or Flickr which feature travel and landscape sections, but maybe find yourself bored with the limited content and features, check out GigaPan. Gigapan is a new photo project engineered by Carnegie Mellon University, which exclusively features panoramic shots which you can explore in a variety of ways. Of course, Gigapans features all the options normally offered by social image hosting sites; you can comment on photos, tag them, bookmark them, etc. However, instead of just limiting you to viewing an idle image; you can pan, zoom, and freeze a snapshot.When you create a snapshot, which is essentially a sub-photos within a panoramic photo, you may treat this new image as a photo in and of itself which you can also share and comment on. You don't need to be the photographer in order to use this feature; anyone can create a snapshot and write a comment about it. You can browse images by tag, user, keyword, location, popularity, and date submitted, as well as upload your own photos. The technology behind GigaPan is the Gigapan robotic mount, which attaches to your small digital camera to create "a fast and easy-to-use high-resolution panorama capture device". You don't need to purchase this product in order to create these images, of course, but Gigapan claims it makes the panoramic creation process much easier.

"GigaPan is the newest development of the Global Connection Project, which aims to help us meet our neighbors across the globe, and learn about our planet itself. GigaPan will help bring distant communities and peoples together through images that have so much detail that they are, themselves, the objects of exploration, discovery and wonder. We believe that enabling people to explore, experience, and share each other's worlds can be a transforming experience. Our mission is to make all aspects of the GigaPan experience accessible and affordable to the broadest possible community".

GigaPan is truly an awesome and unique site. There are so many interesting ways to involve yourself with this photo community and learn more about the world via these interactive panoramic shots. GigaPan truly transcends the boundaries of traditional photo-sharing sites to provide access to information about places and cultures that regular images just don't provide; for example, a GigaPan image called "Guatemala Market" features 45 separate snapshots which explain everything from the traditional indigenous garb in the lower left hand corner to the old soccer goals in the background. Truly an innovation among the photo community.

It would be great if you could fully treat Gigapan snapshots as separate images which you can bookmark and tag; right now you can just create the snapshot and comment on it.