ITCOW 360 [Pano Asia].

Hi, Welcome to ITCOW 360. You can view all panoramas or as we call it, panos, here in one long page, exclude news, sort the various categories like Bridges, HDR, Night Panos, Panos that are taken Indoors or Outdoors, our Aerial section etc.

Stay a while, take a look around. Be sure to check out the Collections.

For iDevices like the iPhone or iPad, click on images or View/ Launch link loads it automatically within your Safari browser.

Our FB is here .

See Services  and About us.

Originally posted on 18 Apr ’10 @ 12:14 pm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mk6okVMU4bk

Originally posted on 5 Nov ’11 @ 11:37 pm

Stats are important and we generally have one post a year on this. Firefox continue to dominate the stats for visitors coming to our sites and who are also running Windows. Not suprise and we continue to develope and output panoramas based on those trends allowing more people to view the panoramas without having to install extra plugins.

There’s a slight uptrend for Safari on iPhone viewers but continue developing and ensuring Firefox and Chrome and IE works covers more than 75% of visitors.

Related 1, 2.

Originally posted on 5 Nov ’11 @ 12:00 am

Know you are in presence of art the next time you shop at LV @ MBS. A 15m by 8m twisted-wood sculpture called ‘Upper Strut’, by British artist Richard DeacoN hangs above the women’s bag area. The above pano peeped the artwork display in the building.

Image: Wallpaper.com

Related: Material World

Originally posted on 31 Oct ’11 @ 12:00 am

Originally posted on 29 Oct ’11 @ 10:40 pm

Our favorite backup-to-the-cloud software has been given an update.

More info here but here’s what’s “important”.

Unlimited File Size – while most of you have been able to backup all of your files with the previous 9 GB maximum, now there will never be a file too big to backup.

Unlimited File Types – now you can backup VMware, Parallels, and other virtual machines; as well as ISOs and every single other file type.

Maximum Performance – we have added an Automatic Throttle to most efficiently use your Internet connection, added file batching to speed small file transfer, added hardware acceleration, reduced RAM user further, and much more.

Why it’s our favorite here.

Originally posted on 27 Oct ’11 @ 8:00 am

Article is here. Comments welcome on the article.Just leave a comment on the page or contact 360@itcow.com

Originally posted on 26 Oct ’11 @ 3:54 pm

Image: http://www.planetsolar.org/

MS Turanor PlanetSolar stopped over in Singapore and surprisingly took longer than expected to charge from the reported 4 days instead of 2 days from the rainy weather we in Singapore is having these few weeks.

It’s a remarkable board. Check the 360 panos. http://www.planetsolar.org/en/multimedia/spherical-photos.html

Originally posted on 16 Oct ’11 @ 2:17 am

Photo – Camera Rental

The EF 8-15mm is available for rent at Camera Rental! Get it!

Originally posted on 13 Oct ’11 @ 9:00 pm

The Fourth Gun Position

Click for larger view.

Originally posted on 12 Oct ’11 @ 8:21 pm

A Tribute to the Gunners

Originally posted on 10 Oct ’11 @ 8:04 pm

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Before Christopher Columbus, there was (maybe) the first eunch whose both Muslim and an eunuch, Zheng He. Debates continue on Zheng He reaching reaching the Americas 70 years before Columbus.

The above, a replica, created in 2005 of Long Ya Men is part of the 600th Anniversary Celebration of Zheng He.

The Long Ya Men served as navigational aids to ancient mariners sailing through the swift waters of the narrow channel between them. The rocks were documented in a navigational map belonging to Ming dynasty’s Admiral Zheng He (郑和), and also in Wang Dayuan’s historical maritime annal, Wu Bei Zhi (武备志).

[geo_mashup_map]

Originally posted on 9 Oct ’11 @ 6:15 pm

The Berlin Wall had practically separated a city and a country into two. It has also stood for the division of Europe and the world into a free and an unfree part. Twenty years ago, the Wall fell completely peacefully, without a shot, without bloodshed. It was like a miracle. The peaceful protests of the people in the socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR) had developed slowly but steadily over months and could not finally be held back. The obstinate GDR regime that has refused basic reforms right to the end, had failed due to the will of the people to be free.

Not even a year had passed between the fall of the Wall and reunification when on 3 October 1990, we achieved German unity in peace and freedom and with the consent of our partners and allies in the world.

– Dr Helmut Kohl, Federal Chancellor (retired)

Map – http://g.co/maps/92v8

Originally posted on 3 Oct ’11 @ 12:00 am

Never got around to release these as a Collections. Better late than never…about 18 months old panoramas of Pulau Ubin, Singapore.

Originally posted on 25 Sep ’11 @ 3:03 am

Image: Vimeo

http://www.vimeo.com/videoschool/lesson/127/crop-factor

Originally posted on 24 Sep ’11 @ 1:22 am

You bought your first DSLR, congrats then the accessories buying spree comes on. It’s common for all of us.Bags to go along, straps and so on. Then the decision to buy more cards for your camera. It can be confusing and well, some just go for the cheapest, some go for the fastest but do you need it?

SD Cards are defined by the SD Association as 8 megabits per second (MBit/ sec) which equals 1MB per second (MB/sec). A Class2 is rated at 16MBit/sec or 2MB/sec. Class4 are “up to” 4MB/sec, Class 6 is up to 6MB/sec and class 10 are 10MB/sec. Recently announced UHS Speed Class 1 (UHS for Ultra High Speed)  has speeds up to 312MB/sec with SDHC and SDXC cards.

So what about CF cards? CFs care commonly branded as 1x which is 1.2Mbit/sec which equals 155kilobits per second (Kb/sec). So a 100x CF card has up to 15MB/sec and 133x will be 20MB/sec. There are the Extreme Pro CF Cards now that has speeds up to 100MB/sec.

Sandisk are straight forward now with their new branding and better customer information with their clearly labelled speeds on the cards itself.

Depending on your needs, we take almost exclusively panoramas thus do not really have to own really speedy cards for for the matter, speedy cameras. SD cards prices have plummeted quite a bit and we’ve switch some cards to SD cards with CF Cards adaptors seeing also that most DSLR seems to be making the switch to SDs.

So, see your camera specs and since you are starting out, we assume you are taking jpg and not RAW. Based on your burst rate, size of your camera sensors. You can easily calculate how much data are being written to your camera per second.

On our primary camera, the Canon 5D MKII, we’ve never need more but it sure can do more than 500 – 800 jpg images with a single burst on a Sandisk Ultra 16Gb with 30MB/s printed on the CF Card at the rated 3.9fps before the battery runs out.

So most times, you do not need that super fast, super expensive, super high capacity SD or CF card for your SGD$1000 camera. Just get something affordable like Sandisk Ultra series. It might also be wise to get 2 pieces of 16Gb if you can or 2 x 8Gb. Loosing one on a trip means you don’t loose all your photos. Of course, remember to backup often.

Originally posted on 18 Sep ’11 @ 2:00 pm

Image: Nodal Ninja

For the R1 and R10. Shipping next week.

More info.

Originally posted on 10 Sep ’11 @ 3:31 pm

Image- Los Angeles Times, March 31, 2003

At times, I do alter certain scenes, colors, nadir that ever so often requires work and at times, masking out people who were actually in the photos before the stitch but not there after the final stitch of the panorama but they ALWAYS do not change the context of the image nor the feel that I wish to bring to the panorama. With the availability of digital cameras, computers and software, shooting panoramas and doing virtual tour is very much the outcome of A Digital Photographer, not an analogue one. Not many years ago, doing a flash or HTML5 panoramas that you can view on a PC or your phone is unheard of.

From <A photo teacher>(link below), we ponders:

What will be the photographer’s relationship to their subject matter?

What responsibilities does the photographer have to their subject matter?

How does the photographer reconcile their intentions and practice with regards to their subject matter, particularly in the context of photographing “the Other”?

After the photographs are made, what becomes of them and of the subjects in the photographs? For whom do the photographs benefit?

What ethical and/or moral guidelines will the photographer set for themselves and their working practice?

Image at start of article, it is altered from 2 images. The photographer was dismissed by the LA Times. It does make for a stronger images that “said” more.

http://www.zonezero.com/magazine/articles/altered/altered.html
http://aphototeacher.com/2008/02/11/fact-and-fiction-some-questions-on-documentary-photography/

Originally posted on 1 Sep ’11 @ 9:00 am

Singapore’s only natural history museum, the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research (RMBR) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) has received its largest gift from the Lee Foundation. This gift and others enables the RMBR to embark on building a new purpose-designed building for its invaluable collection of animals and plants specimens. To be renamed the ‘Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum’, the new building will showcase Southeast Asian biodiversity and environmental issues in its exhibition hall.

http://rmbr.nus.edu.sg/

Originally posted on 27 Aug ’11 @ 9:00 am

http://gardengnomesoftware.com/pano2vr_download.php

Originally posted on 27 Aug ’11 @ 12:00 am

View

Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research Department of Biological Sciences
Faculty of Science
National University of Singapore
6 Science Drive 2
Blk S6, #03-01
Singapore 117546
REPUBLIC OF SINGAPORE

Tel: +65-6516-5082

Originally posted on 26 Aug ’11 @ 3:49 pm

The Dyron 8mm fisheye (USD$1430) designed for the G11, G12 and divers. To be used together with the Dyron Recsea housing (USD$1100).

Originally posted on 24 Aug ’11 @ 12:00 am

Image: Mac A. Cody, 2007

Using a flat bed scanner to take photos

http://home.roadrunner.com/~maccody/robotics/PanoramaScanCam/index.html

Originally posted on 22 Aug ’11 @ 12:00 am

The Slant. Sure looks awkard but seems they figure somethings for this uniquely designed and beautiful panoramas head. Fisheye lenses at 8mm usually has a 180 FOV on crop sensors cameras. This slant allows stitching software to find (more) control points easier with overlapping slanted images.

http://www.novoflex.com/en/products/panorama-photography/vr-system-slant/

Originally posted on 18 Aug ’11 @ 12:00 am

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Originally posted on 16 Aug ’11 @ 9:00 pm

You can buy a Canon EF 50mm F/1.8 and use it as a lens cap while using it to take photos. Some real nice photos but well…

As seen on Wired.

Originally posted on 16 Aug ’11 @ 9:00 am