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  • How to get a 360 degree Panoramic Photo to show in Facebook

    How to get a 360 degree Panoramic Photo to show in Facebook

    Warning: This is a bit of a geeky post, so if Pano photography isn’t your thing you probably won’t enjoy this post as much as I do :) 

    Earlier this month Facebook announced the support of 360 degree Panoramic photos to show on your timeline. While 360 cameras are still fairly new tech, Facebook have enabled the tech to allow you to post normal Pano Photos from your iPhone or Samsung to show up as 360 photos in Facebook.

    Earlier this week I made a Pano Photo in Photoshop & PTGui from a number of stitched images that I had taken with the DJI Phantom 4. Unfortunately when I uploaded it to Facebook it didn’t see it as a Pano picture, so I had to do a bit of digging around to get it to work.

    Here are a couple of “tips & tricks” I found to get your Pano to show in Facebook

    • Standard iPhone (4s and up) Pano photos should work as long as they cover at least 100 degrees of view horizontally. You simply upload your Pano using the Facebook app on your iOS device and it should pick it up automatically. If it doesn’t it means that the image is probably too small
    • Images should be in a 2:1 ratio format, with the maximum size of 6000px x 3000px. Facebook seems to be quite sticky about this. If it is larger than that it doesn’t seem to upload without a bit of tweaking
    • If you edit this in Photoshop you may have to “inject” specific Metadata (EXIF) data into the image.
      To inject EXIF data, I would recommend using the exif.er tool. You will need to change the following criteria. This should trigger Facebooks 360 processing when uploading

      • Make: RICOH
      • Model: RICOH THETA S
    • You can also add Make: “Apple” & Model: “iPhone 6s” if you have an image which is not 360
    • Use the awesome tool PTGui to stitch images that you have taken into a Pano or 360 “sphere”
    • You can also use the Google Streetview iOS app to take Spherical Photos which you can then upload to Facebook. Simply take the 360 pic with the built in camera and upload to FB using the FB app

    Check out this really comprehensive post from Facebook about editing & injecting MetaData into 360 photos. Also, this post gives some insight into what you can and can’t do with 360 FB Photos.

    This is really exciting tech and the advent of 360 cameras will def be one of the “next big things”, interested to see how this pans out :) Now if only Facebook will allow us to embed these Panos…

  • DroneDeploy App with DJI Phantom4

    DroneDeploy App with DJI Phantom4

    I recently came across a really awesome app for my new favorite tech, the DJI Phantom 4. The app/service is called DroneDeploy and offers pre-planned autonomous flights over a specified area.

    Firstly you install the DroneDeploy app (iOS & Android) on your phone, which allows you to plan your flight. Once you have done your planning, which can take a little while to get 100%, you then upload the images that have been taken to the DroneDeploy website.

    The results of the flight are then published in a number of formats including 2D Mapping, 3D mapping & modelling, Agricultural Mapping & Terrain & Elevation Mapping. I recently did a flight over an area, called Sugar Rush Park, in Ballito, and here are some of the results.

    You will see in the below embed you can zoom in quite a bit and get high a very high resolution image for the 2D Mapping

    But what really blew me away was the amazing 3D rendering of the images that are uploaded to the DroneDeploy Site.

    You can zoom in on the above image and pan around with your mouse. Although some of the textures seem to look a bit funny, you can fix this by uploading more images of the flight. All of this done with a drone!! Amazing.

    The other great feature of Drone Deploy is very useful for the Agricultural sector. The software allows you to analyze crops using some serious technology. I don’t understand all the ins & outs, but the software offers a number of farming Algorithms such as NDVI and VARI to analyze crops. This is what the image looks like once it has been processed.

    pic2

    Obviously there is a cost for this software, which comes in at $99 per month for the Pro Package. They do offer a 30 Day Trial which is handy to get your head around the software, as well as a Free Package which allows you to do 5 flights a month but no exporting. Check out some of the FAQ’s

    All in all, this is an amazing piece of software, unfortunately can’t afford it at the moment, but hopefully I will get to play around with it a bit more in the future.

    Disclaimer: I was not asked to review DroneDeploy, and this is my personal opinion of the software

  • Uber South Africa launches Cash Payment Options

    Uber South Africa launches Cash Payment Options

    Earlier this week Uber South Africa launched cash payments for rides as an option. In a country where the majority of people don’t have credit cards, or cards which can be used for online purchases, cash still plays a vital role in day to day life.

    So after rolling out cash payments in a number of countries before this, including Kenya, Singapore & India, Uber South Africa have launched cash payments in South Africa. This now means that when you complete your trip, you pay the driver in cash after the fare is calculated and there is no need for cards.

    Anyone can use this option and all you need to sign up for an Uber account is a valid South African Mobile number. To use the cash option you can simply follow the below steps:

    ubercash1

    Don’t forget that if you are a first time rider, you can use my Uber Promo Code “uberiguyza” and get R100 off your first trip!

    For more info and the complete ins & outs of Uber Cash, check out the official blogpost

  • DJI Phantom 4 South African First Look

    DJI Phantom 4 South African First Look

    A few weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to pick up a new DJI Phantom 4 Drone. The reason behind getting is 2-fold, which I will cover in a later blog, but for now, it’s been a fun learning curve getting to know the Drone and it’s capabilities.

    Let me start off first by saying, the DJI Phantom 4 is a phenomenal piece of technology. We are moving into a new era where Drones are going to become more accessible to the consumer market, and I reckon loads of people will soon start purchasing them for personal use.

    I bought mine from the guys at CopterShop.co.za, who were incredibly knowledgeable and helpful throughout the purchasing process. I bought the extra 2 batteries package, as you definitely need extra batteries when flying.

    I’ll be the first to admit that flying Drones is NOT as simple as picking up a remote control and flying it off into the sunset(or sunrise) These things are technically advanced so much so that one slip of the finger and you will be in tears. They take a number of hours of practice, but more importantly keeping a level head and not fooling around is far more important.

    The most unique feature of the Phantom 4 has to be it’s obstacle avoidance sensors. This means, then when flying forwards (not backwards) the Phantom has sensors built in that will automatically stop the drone from flying into any obstacles. This is really handy when flying close to trees & buildings etc, as it almost makes it impossible to crash. Almost.

    The standard flying time on the battery is around 20-25 mins, but the software is designed to bring back the Drone once it sees you running out of power. The range on the Drone is around 5km, yes FIVE Kilometers!!, although I haven’t tested that (and probably won’t) and you can go up to a maximum altitude of 500m. Again, that is incredibly high, so the max I have been is 150m and I started getting a bit nervous.

    Attempt at editing one of my flights

    The camera on the DJI Phantom 4 offers full 4K video recording with 12MP stills. Live images are transmitted back to your Smartphone at all times, and you can download the images & video from the SD card which is on the drone. The camera is mounted on a very, very stable Gimble, and once that Drone is in the air, you will see almost zero shaking on your pictures.

    All in all this is a fantastic device, and I am going to be focusing a bit more of my content on some Drone tips & tricks as well as apps etc. I am really excited about how this is going to work out ;)

  • Back after a Malware Hack

    Back after a Malware Hack

    If you subscribe to my RSS feed or Feedburner newsletter, I have to apologise for some of the dodgy posts you may have seen in the last couple of days.

    It turns out, WordPress sometimes isn’t as great as it sounds, and malware attacks are a real threat. Added to that, somehow the hackers had the ability to post rubbish articles, which in turn made Google unhappy and they blocked the site.

    I am however glad to say, that after hours of trying to decipher where the issue lay, and reading loads of articles I finally managed to get rid of the insane JS:MW22 jquery malware that was planted in my theme code.

    So back to regular programming coming soon!!!