Gigapan Systems Beta Release

Gigapan Systems announced today that their beta program is officially underway. For the next 10 weeks, those of you who sign up and get on the beta list will get a discount on the system. Check out this example to see what this technology is capable of. Wow...

Note that you are able to view these panoramas in you local KML viewer (i.e. Google Earth)

UPDATE:

This was too funny not to post...Where is Waldo?

Gigapan and Global Connection

Gigapan is an interesting project to say the least and it looks like the Global Connection Project is making full use of the technology. Commercial Gigapan is a robotic camera mount that creates these panoramas that (starting in August) can be uploaded and compiled for free! They also mention that this will be released as an open source project which is cool too...
Check out the impressive list of folks contributing to the Global Connection Project. I always end up coming back to FlashEarth.com which was developed by Paul Neave who is also noted as a team member for the Global Connection Project. The Gigapan viewer is a flash app that I suspect Paul had a lot to do with. Because this is a Flash viewer, we can take it to the web as well as to the desk top through applications like Acrobat 9.0 and Google Earth.

Pretty soon, we will not have to leave the house for vacation!!! We will be able to visit anywhere on earth via a Google application.