I discovered panoramic photography in the year 2000 after getting my first digital camera (a canon digital elph) which came with its own primitive panorama stitching software. Soon after that I imagined that a virtual tour of Prague, one of the world's most beautiful cities, would be a great idea. I first worked on prague360.com with Adam Trachtman. At the time, there were no google maps (or any other mapping API) available for Prague, and it took some time to even find a high-resolution street map of Prague that could be used for this purpose. The original site used a flash-based map component combined with interactive panoramas played via the QTVR / Shockwave / Spi-v / Java / DevalVR plugins.
At the time, prague360.com was one of the Internet's first websites combining a map with georeferenced 360º photos - predating Google Streetview by two years.
When the Google Maps API became available, Prague360.com morphed into 360cities.net, and more and more panoramic photographers used this platform to publish their growing collections of 360º photos. The company was formally founded in 2007 with angel investment. In 2008 it became integrated with Google Earth, where it remains over ten years later. 608076502
In 2014 I started my next company, Sphericam, designing and building professional-grade 360º cameras for Virtual Reality.
I do consulting work for startups involved in camera hardware design, VR, and 360º imaging.
I'm always interested in shooting Gigapixel images, especially of cities, from the top of a skyscraper.
I can be reached by skype at jeffrey.s.martin or by phone/whatsapp/signal at country code +420, followed by the phone number at the end of the fourth paragraph in this text.
