The Best View in the Alps

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Origin of Cool: The Netherlands

The Harbour Crane Hotel in Harlingen offers a room with a view like no other. Swinging from a crane at a height of 17m (55ft), the room can be rotated 360 degrees to get a nice panoramic view of Wadden Sea or the town.

Have you spotted any other unusual hotels around the world? Let us know and we’ll feature them in a future post.

Origin of Cool: Germany

The ‘Throwable Panoramic Ball Camera‘ is an awesome new camera developed by a group of computer science researchers led by Jonas Pfeil.

How does it work?
You throw the ball into the air and at its highest point, the cameras inside simultaneously capture images. The results are full spherical panoramas.

It uses 36 separate 2-megapixel mobile phone camera modules, which are mounted in an enclosure that’s padded with foam. Photographs can then be downloaded to a computer via USB and viewed in a spherical panoramic viewer.
 
Here’s a video demonstration of the camera in action:

Origin of Cool thinks the concept is great. Having seen gigapan photography come to the fore at Barack Obama’s inauguration in Washington, we can definitely see a combination of that and this creating a 360 high definition image that you can zoom in on for up to half a mile.

Found on PetaPixel
via @joshuabaer