It’s finally here, your new account centre is now live. What’s all the fuss about I hear you ask? Well, all the same features are available to you when you log in and they all work in the same way however things all look a little different. The main benefit of the new account centre is improved work flow. You can now manage your scenes and virtual tours without ever navigating away to sub-pages; this should significantly speed things up for you. We’ve also done away with some of the confirmation messages that we know some of you found a little annoying.

The new account centre also makes it possible for us to introduce new features and improvements to you going forward, the first of which is available right now…

Super fast photo upload

No, we haven’t increased the speed of the internet, we’ve simply used a clever bit of technology. When you choose a photo to upload, it’s resized in the background by your web browser before you even click on the upload button. As a result you only ever send a smaller photo to us, meaning uploads happen in a fraction of the time. No more waiting for photos to upload and no more manual resizing.

Speed comparison with average broadband connection, 512kb/s using 3MB photo.
Regular photo upload: 45 seconds
Super fast photo upload: 0.9 seconds

This feature is only available to you if you use the Google Chrome web browser (Or Mozilla Firefox but we prefer Chrome). It is not compatible with Internet Explorer – but don’t blame us, Microsoft are unfortunately a little way behind in the ‘browser wars’ and it’s not possible to implement just now. We will of course roll it out for Internet Explorer when Microsoft have played catch up.

We strongly recommend installing Google Chrome as your web browser as we will be introducing some exciting new features in your account centre soon which will only be available to those of you using the Chrome browser. The installation process is quick and painless – Go for it, download Google Chrome. You won’t look back.

The changes are mostly under the hood, with a new unified virtual tour viewer for all platforms and browsers. Due to the decline of Macromedia Flash content we’ve changed our player so that it no longer relies on Flash. It now uses the latest web standards to present the tours, so no third party browser add-ons are required. We’ve also added the speed controls to the player when viewing on iOS devices.

This demonstrates our commitment to providing an ever improving service to our customers which is always up-to-date using the latest and best web technologies.

• iOS compatibility – for viewing of tours, scenes and slideshows on iPhone’s and iPad’s.
• New admin system for an improved user experience – all of the same features will be available to you but we will improve numerous areas to speed up your virtual tour processing.

We are committed to improving our service to you and we hope you enjoy 2012 with us.

We always listen to our customers, if you would like to make some recommendations please email support@virtualtouronline.co.uk

With our annual subscription service you can have unlimited virtual tours, scenes and slideshows so we don’t mind if you use 1 or 1000 – we want you to take advantage of our service. In the current property market your customers will appreciate that you are doing everything you can to sell or let their property.

With the recent abolition of Home Information Packs (HIPs) virtual tour subscriptions have increased with estate agents favouring them over inaccurate floorplans. A virtual tour gives a ‘better representation’ of a room and property, when a potential buyer or tenant requests a viewing after seeing a virtual tour, you know they are serious.

You have most likely invested heavily in your online presence and promotion so consider taking that extra step to maximise the effectiveness of your web investment. Remember all new subscribers can take advantage of our free Sony panorama camera promotion so sign up now.

We have lots of exciting new features coming soon including an improved administration area for all estate agents facilitating an improved and faster work-flow, so watch this space…

The technology in these cameras is fantastic, if you haven’t read about them please see our blog post.

Act now to ensure you get a free Sony Sweep Panorama camera. Contact us and mention the free camera offer.

* Only one camera per customer. If you are running multiple concurrent subscriptions we will supply you with multiple cameras, one for each subscription. Offer only available to £400 per year unlimited use subscriptions.

Producing and getting your virtual tours online just got easier and faster.

Sony has recently developed a new technology called Sweep Panorama which is built in to a number of it’s recent Cyber-shot models of digital camera. Virtual Tour Online have thouroughly tested this technology for the estate agent industry and we’re very impressed.

You simply hold the shutter down and rotate on the spot while the camera does all the work. With this technology you no longer need to manually line up each picture and the scene is stitched in a matter of seconds ready for you to preview. Our tests showed that this technology is more resistant to common problems with taking panoramic photos.

We recommend that the camera is used in Vertical Wide mode which produces a 185 degree scene but gives you increased height so you can see more of the room, please see the animation above for more information on this mode.

Using a Sony Sweep Panorama capable digital camera has the following benefits:

• faster scene taking with one smooth motion shot rather than several single photos with no need to manually line up the next photo,
• stitched scene can be viewed immediately while still at the property – if you see an obvious problem with the stitching you can simply take the scene again,
• fully compatible with Virtual Tour Online.

See more information on Sonys Sweep Panorama technology including which models of digital camera have this technology built in. The entry level model DSC-W350 was our test camera and it performed brilliantly. Priced from £149.99 to £179.99 in major high street retailers. Producing and getting your virtual tours online just got easier and faster.

A slideshow can contain a sequence of any images you wish with a subtle transition between each, not just property photos.

For example, the first image in your slideshow could be your company logo, the second could be a brief description of the property etc. The options really are limitless.

All you need is some basic image creation skills using any graphics package on your computer.

Remember if the introduction slideshow is listed first in your tour then it will run immediately upon being loaded by a visitor, it will continue in a loop until the visitor clicks on another scene or slideshow in your virtual tour.

Click here for an example.

Here’s some info you might need:
1. When creating your images, the optimum size is 400 pixels in width by 270 pixels in height.
2. A basic resolution can be used such as 72 pixels per/cm as the images are only ever going to be displayed on a computer screen.
3. Please visit our Help/Wiki for more information on creating a slideshow.