Notes on photo sphere/panoramic EXIF metadata

• Google's EXIF/XMP metadata tag specification for panoramic images
• Panorama images with sky are to have a negative value for the CroppedAreaTopPixels tag. (The panoramic viewer of Facebook ignores the value altogether, though, and assumes the horizon in the middle of the picture.)
• If a camera or software normally produces panoramic images with cylindrical projection, then doing a vertical capture actually produces a transverse cylindrical image. There is no standardized value for the EXIF ProjectionType field to cover this. (One option is to reproject them to equirectangular — which, again, is not very well supported.)
• Facebook's document on what tags to set
• The Facebook web interface insists that FullPanoHeightPixels be half the size of FullPanoWidthPixels. Else you get “no new photos were uploaded”.

/ Tags: Photo.

Nokia phones turn off vibration alarm when connected to a charger

Some Nokia phones deactivate vibrato alarm when connected to a charger. This bug goes back to models as old as the 3330 and there are reports (see link) for others as well. Apparently, that is “Not A Bug, But A Feature”™ according to the linked forums, but it still means one has to remember changing the profile from vibra-only to one with ringtone enabled. If you are a sensible person, you turn your gadgets silent in public. But that probably had not been anticipated by Nokia back then. And now we have blaring ringtones everywhere—but that is a topic for another time.

Posted 2013-02-24 17:02 / Tags: Bugs, Nokia. / link