Google launches Views, allows you to add 360 degree panoramas to Maps

This looks pretty cool. Google has launched a community site called Views, which allows you to upload and share panoramic 360% photos to Maps.

In an official blog post, product manager for Google Maps & Photo Sphere Evan Rapoport, explains that the panoramas are photo spheres that can easily be created with any Android device running version 4.2 (Jelly Bean) or higher.

He reckons that Views is important because “when photos are added to a map, whether they’re from your camera or through Street View, they record unique experiences that collectively create the story of a place and what it looked like at a particular moment in time”.

If you’re a little more serious about photography, you can also upload any 360 degree panoramic photos you might have taken with your DSLR camera.

According to Rapoport:

To upload 360º photo spheres, just sign into the Views site with your Google+ profile and click the blue camera button on the top right of the page. This will enable you to import your existing photo spheres from your Google+ photos. You can also upload 360º photo spheres to Views from the Gallery in Android by tapping “Share” and then selecting Google Maps.

Views isn’t just about collating geo-tagged photos from the Google community though. The site also incorporates Google’s Street View Gallery, which means you can check out panoramas of the company’s most popular Street View collections, including the Grand Canyon to the Swiss Alps.