The Panoramio layer (found under the Geographic Web layer folder in Google Earth) was updated this weekend with another 500,000 photos. The last major update was back in September when 1 million photos were added. These photos come from the popular free Google Panoramio web site which lets you upload your favorite photos and map them to the location where the photo was taken. Google then takes photos (which meet the criteria) and adds them a few weeks or months later to the Panoramio layer. According to the announcement on their blog, the Panoramio layer now contains photos up to ID 15,881,277.
The Panoramio layer is a great way to explore places around the world and get a ground-level perspective of those places. Google updated the layer look in August. Popular locations may have dozens of photos from many angles. The Panoramio site even has a cool “Look Around” mode that combines photos from many people to let you look at a site from many perspectives. If you see a site with lots of photos, just click on the photo in its placemark and look for the “Look Around” link (if available).
