This week we announced that we will be bringing 360 Panorama to the new BlackBerry 10 platform!

 

On Tuesday, 360 Panorama Product Manager Candemir Orsan took the stage during the BlackBerry World keynote with Martyn Mallick VP, Global Alliances & Business Development at Research In Motion, for a live demo of 360 Panorama on a BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha test device.

 

We were able to get a demo build of 360 Panorama for BlackBerry 10 on a very tight deadline – we had less than a month after getting access to a BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha test device to prepare a working demo for BlackBerry World. Our engineering team worked at full sprint (Mobile Engineer Danny Pier in particular) to pull this off, and we were extremely pleased with the high caliber BlackBerry 10 developer tools – they worked right out of the box.

 

Meeting this deadline was due not only to the diligence of our engineering team (Mobile Engineer Danny Pier in particular), but also the caliber of the BlackBerry 10 developer tools. We found the BlackBerry 10 development toolkit to be outstanding. With everything contained within a single environment, the tools essentially worked out of the box. There is no way our ambitious timeline would have been possible without the tools being at such a high caliber.

 

A few highlights from the last few weeks:

 

Danny was able to first get frames to appear on the test device while working from the backseat of Candemir’s wagon, on the return from a company retreat.

 

Not a bad office view.
 

Soon to follow was display of the grid.

 

 

It wasn’t long before we had a functional demo of the app, just in time to confirm that Candemir would be onstage for a demo as part of the keynote presentation at BlackBerry World.

 

 

We’re excited to bring 360 Panorama to a new audience of users on the BlackBerry 10 platform. Welcome BlackBerry users! We can’t wait to see what you capture with 360 Panorama.

 

 

 

We just released a brand new and awesome version of 360 Panorama in the App Store today.  Everyone on the team put in a lot of hard work into version 4.1. We are very excited to get it in your hands.

This version has a great collection of new features and support for the new iPad’s amazing Retina display.

The app is a living and breathing organism for us.  We are constantly using it every day, thinking about how we can improve it, and discussing our ideas.  And believe me, we have no shortage of those.

We carefully pick and choose what the next update will include by thinking about how we can make the app more magical, simpler, and easier to use.

To quote @chamillionare: “Making everything simple is actually complicated most of the time…”

Most importantly we listen to what our customers have to say.  We have a great community of users that actively keep in touch and send us valuable feedback.

With version 4.1 we are introducing the in-app panorama list. You can now quickly browse and view your panoramas with clear thumbnails instead of searching for them in your camera roll.

 

 

We also display dates for your panoramas and show which ones you’ve uploaded.  It will be much easier to take a bunch of panoramas and upload them for sharing, enhancement, and safe keeping when you get back home to fast internet.

Once you capture a panorama, 360 will automatically save it to your list so you don’t have to worry about tapping the ‘Save’ button.  In fact, the ‘Save’ button is now gone!  Wait a minute!  What if you want to save panoramas to your photo library? Easy.  Tap the new ‘Camera Roll’ button in the ‘Share’ menu and 360 will export your panorama for you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, there’s the beautiful full-screen viewing mode: While you are viewing a panorama, tap the screen to hide the menu bar and the other buttons and get an immersive display of the scenery.  Don’t forget to tap the ‘Gyro’ button for further awesomeness.

Make sure to check out the full-screen viewing especially on your iPad.  It’s the next best thing to being there.  I promise you will be impressed.

 

 

Oh, and there is one more thing.  360 Panorama now speaks Deutsch in the German store.

Willkommen bei 360 Panorama.

We hope you’re enjoying the holiday season with friends, family, and fun. Here at Occipital, we’ve been getting in the mood for weeks as you’ve been uploading holiday panoramas. In fact, we’ve been enjoying it so much, we thought it might be fun to share a collection of our favorite holiday light panoramas from around the globe. Enjoy!

 

Click flat images to be taken to the 360 view!

Tokyo, Japan

From Manabu

Seattle, Washington USA

From Cliff

Disney World in Orlando, Florida USA

 

 

 

 

From Marc

 

Islington, United Kingdom

 

 

 

 

From James

 

Edinburgh, United Kingdom

 

 

 

 

From Barry

 

Canterbury, New Zealand

 

 

 

 

From nzbullet

 

Victoria, Australia

 

 

 

 

From shawnt 

 

Guatemala

 

 

 

 

From genteechristian 

 

Surat, Thailand

 

 

 

 

From Robin 

 

Happy Holidays to you and yours from the Occipital team!