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Google launches Views Web site for user-uploaded photo spheres

New community Web site lets users submit and browse images captured in the 360-degree panoramic format that Google launched last October.

Steven Musil Night Editor / News
Steven Musil is the night news editor at CNET News. He's been hooked on tech since learning BASIC in the late '70s. When not cleaning up after his daughter and son, Steven can be found pedaling around the San Francisco Bay Area. Before joining CNET in 2000, Steven spent 10 years at various Bay Area newspapers.
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Steven Musil
Google's photo spheres on the Web giant's Views Web site.
Google's photo spheres on the Web giant's Views Web site. Google

Google launched a new community Web site on Tuesday that allows users to submit and browse Street View-like photo spheres.

Dubbed Views, the Web site lets Google+ users upload images to Google Maps captured in the 360-degree panoramic format, Google said in a company blog post announcing the new site. Google launched the photo spheres format last October with the debut of Android 4.2

To upload photo spheres to Google, Google+ users need only to sign into their account and click the blue camera button at the top right of the page, Google Product Manager Evan Rapoport wrote in the blog post. Existing panoramic images can also be uploaded to Views from the Android Gallery app by tapping "Share" and selecting Google Maps as the destination.

To give the site immediate content, Google included a Street View Gallery that features panoramas of Google's most popular Street View collections. Clicking the "Explore" button at the top of the page will launch the collections next to the user-submitted content.

Photo spheres can be created using the camera on any device running Android 4.2 or later, as well as most of Google's own Nexus devices. Images captured on DSLRs can also be shared.