PlanetEye

Friday, November 16th, 2007

New in Beta: Large images

Juan Gonzalez

Vice President, Technology

It was a little bit ironic to have such a great collection of the best travel photos around the web and not showcase them in their full splendor.  With our latest release the team has made it possible to view each photograph in its original size.  You’ll notice that the Media Preview panel that appears whenever you click on any image on the map has been redesigned:

 The basic information about the photograph is readily available without any particular action and at the bottom-left corner there is a brand new link to the “Photo Page”, which is a page with all the detailed information plus handy controls to navigate through the entire collection of a particular photographer.   We have made this an HTML page to enable direct linking to any photograph in our database, like these amazing photos from Marco in Rome.  We decided that if you are curious about a given photographer and browse his/her personal profile, clicking on each image should also take you to the “Photo Page”; after all it’s all about great photography.

Another element that should make this page very useful is a mini map of the geotagged location of the photo.  Not only will it show the precise geotag, it will also do a reverse-lookup and tell you the name of the location, sometimes the city, sometimes a much more precise text description (very useful when you’re not certain what the name of that little town you came across in a road trip was).

You will also notice that many cities are looking far more interesting these days.  We owe it all to the amazing group of photographers, like Amanda from Sydney, whom have taken the lead in showing us their cities from their very personal perspective.   This is a nice little departure from the usual travel photography that you would expect to find in our site, but signals of great things to come in the near future. 

• Posted in  Development, PlanetEye
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Friday, October 26th, 2007

New in Beta: Breadcrumbs

Juan Gonzalez

Vice President, Technology

With the Culture Shot we introduced a new way to discover destinations. The idea is to detach geography from the process of deciding where to go next. However, we realized it was a little daunting to click on one of the images in the home page, be taken to a new location on the map and not be sure where exactly we had arrived. Most people would have to zoom out until some familiar geographic feature was visible. This week we have focused on making this process a lot easier:

• We added a breadcrumb object at the top of the map, visible at all times. It is constantly telling you where in the world you are. It is clickable, giving you shortcuts to jump back to the zoom level that best displays your current city and country.

• Although there was a zoom control already, many people suggested it wasn’t easy to use. We have not only improved the look of the zoom control to make it compatible with the general look of the site; we have improved its usability by adding (-) and (+) controls to the sides of the slider to move one zoom level at a time. And it will always be visible, even if you open the Media Panel.
  
  A very cool thing to try is to keep the Media Panel open while you zoom in and out of the map: the contents of the Panel will update to include a selection of the best photos in whichever area you’re looking at.

The world is a more interesting place to discover. We’ve imported thousands of the best travel photos we could find in Panoramio. We’ve focused on some of the top travel destinations such as Cairo, Dublin, St. Petersburg, Copenhagen, Budapest, Edinburgh, Beijing, Maui, Hong Kong, Istanbul, Venice, Lisbon, Madrid and Prague. Use the Search box to find them on the map. And if you agree with us that these are great travel photos, be sure to give them 5 stars when you rate them.

• Posted in  Development, PlanetEye
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Sunday, October 21st, 2007

New in Beta: Deep Linking

Juan Gonzalez

Vice President, Technology

What good is it to have all those far-reaching travel experiences and to take all those amazing shots if we can’t show the world? With our latest release we are taking a step towards becoming the standard way for travellers to share their experiences with friends and other enthusiasts: our application now supports deep linking, which means that it is possible to open the map on any particular region and highlight a very specific image, even if that particular image was not included in the selection of best photos by the MediaDots. To give it a try, go to your own Media page and click on any of your geo-tagged photographs. The resulting place marker will stay active on the map even as you change the zoom level, move around or click on different filters (hotels, restaurants or attractions).

We’ve also added a new collection of images to our home page, which is quickly becoming a gateway for new and exciting destinations. Of course, after jumping to an unknown destination we all wonder where we are, so we have improved the algorithm that calculates your location and gives you access to the local guide. However, you’ll have to be patient with the local travel guides as we are still recruiting local experts in many cities to write the content for them. If you want to see what a local guide looks like try Toronto, Canada.

There were a number of other enhancements, such as a better randomizer for the inspiration page that results in better chances to discovery great destinations and deep link into the images once they are selected. We also refined our search box in such a way that the zoom level of the resultinap map is more appropriate to the chosen destination.

Thanks to everyone that has provided valuable feedback allowing us to keep improving the application week after week.

• Posted in  Development, PlanetEye
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Thursday, October 11th, 2007

PlanetEye Beta

Juan Gonzalez

Vice President, Technology

PlanetEye is an online travel guide for photography loving travelers. We combine high quality geo-tagged photographs with advice from passionate locals to create a travel experience that will inspire you to explore destinations, find the unexpected and experience travel that is beyond words. As the VP of Technology I lead the amazing team that is responsible for building this application.

Today, we start a new tradition at PlanetEye: this is the first post in a series devoted to giving you complete insight into our product, the technology behind it, and the process that will make it one of the leading Web destinations for travel research.

Since most of our readers haven’t been exposed to our story yet, I thought it would be appropriate to start with some context: Over the last few months our team has managed to implement a Web application capable of importing and ranking hundreds of thousands of geo-located data and creating beautiful maps. In the process, we discovered that although many sites like to say they have geo-located media, most of it is, frankly, uninspiring. We’ve also managed to create a mapping technology that is compelling to see in action, and can be enriched with valuable data for the traveller. As if we were not busy enough, we’ve mastered the art of creating useful Facebook applications. The result is a new kind of travel guide that is not only a joy to explore but gives you the tools to venture into unknown destinations and get the most out of them through the advice of passionate locals.

If you would like to participate in this Beta, be sure to sign-up. We are sending hundreds of invitations every week. If you have been using the application already, you’ll be glad to hear that we’ve made it a top priority to incorporate feedback from our early users, so as we publish this post, a new version of the application is being deployed. Some of the things you may notice are:

• An outstanding new way to discover destinations. The Culture Shot (animated banner in the home page) is an idea that has evolved over the course of months, and it is finally been implemented as it was conceived. It’s not only gorgeous but it will become the best way to get your journey started by jumping into an exciting destination.
• Faster Map: While we were very proud of our ability to display our own layers of information even faster than the map would render, the fact is that we had to make the map work just as fast. With this release we’ve fine tuned the algorithm to display map tiles which should result in a much faster experience overall.
• Better Media Management: If you’re among the elite of enthusiasts with lots of geo-located media, you will appreciate how much we have improved the upload and geo-tag features. We are particularly interested to learn how you manage your media currently as we plan to create features to make it easier to move your media into PlanetEye.
• Better Images: Not only we are constantly adding the best images from trusted sources like Flickr and Panoramio, we have also improved our rating algorithm to make sure that you’re given the absolute best images we can find in any of our featured locations. Make sure you rate all the images that you come across by clicking on the stars in the bottom-left corner of the Photo Preview.
• Finally, since we are very interested in your feedback, we’ve added a link in the top navigation to leave your comments. We may even be able to implement your suggestions in the next release!

In the last week, we’ve also managed to deploy a brand new look and feel for our popular Facebook Application “My City”, and have even bigger plans for it over the next few weeks. If you haven’t done so, now would be a good time to add it.

Get ready for an amazing journey.

Juan M. Gonzalez
Vice President, Technology

• Posted in  Development, PlanetEye
• 27 Comments »