Panoramio – Google’s Community of Geolocated Photos

There are tons online web sites where you can store your images. It is hard to make something different to attract customers in fierce competition. Panoramio was able to get out of crowd and earn respect and solid reputation in the online community. Mere fact, that the company has been acquired by Google in 2007, proves value of its services and intellectual property.

Panoramio allows you to allocate photos on the map exactly over the place they were taken. So, every photo is linked with the particular place both physically and in your memory. You can store up to 2 Gb, approximately 2000 photos with 4 Mega Pixels camera, and your photos are stored at your personal area in their original size and quality.

The opportunity to link photos with particular place is particularly handy for tourists, backpackers, and travelers, where location makes a lot of sense in understanding of the photo content.

Note that Panoramio is absolutely not the same as Google Earth, even the sites are sharing some mutual technologies. So, uploading photos onto Panoramio does not automatically mean they will appear on Google Earth, and it will not happen instantly. Basically, photos get updated and nominated by the Panoramio Team as "Popular" and can be seen in the Popular Tab of the Panoramio World Map. These photos are then forwarded to Google Earth who then make their own selections.

When you have logged into the Panoramio site, and can see your photos, Blue Compasses next to the photos indicates that they have been approved for Google Earth and may get included in the next batch upload to Google Earth which usually happens on a monthly basis.

Website address: http://www.panoramio.com/

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