The thing that gets me about most of these flash "explore" widgets (including Street View) is that they don't update the URL with the pitch/yaw/zoom/lat/lng information, making the cool stuff you find pretty hard to share around.

Gigapan.org has a snapshot feature for that. 26-gigapixel is bigger than most (all?) of what Gigapan has, but they have a bunch more. The Obama inauguration one[1] is probably their most famous.

I don't really ever get tired of being able to "enhance! enhance!"[2] an image.

1) http://gigapan.org/gigapans/15374/

2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxq9yj2pVWk

Click the 'Share my position'/'Partager ma position' button at the bottom, among the Twitter and Facebook links, to get a link with coordinates.

Aagh upside down scrolling.

I wonder what that is: http://imgur.com/ATpQj.png

It's photoshopped in. There are 10 photoshopped easter eggs on the map, placed there by the developers, and this is one of them. Another example is a fake grafitti drawing of what is assumed to be the dev/photography team photoshopped onto the side of a building.

Ok, we have a winner!

Here's a giant roof-turtle:

http://www.paris-26-gigapixels.com/index-fr.php?x=-31.115224...

If you look closely there is a tiny white number 6 close to his head.

There is equally a tiny number 3 just above the pi symbol if you zoom in all the way:

http://www.paris-26-gigapixels.com/?x=55.64285410150907&...

So it's part of the easter eggs. Damn what a wild goose chase (and a lesson in not making assumptions, you know what they make of you...)

Maybe related to the Pi Day ?

The green cross is the symbol for a pharmacy. 3:14 is the time, not the date, since we'd use 14/3.

Isn't a bit strange that the current time = the 3 first digits of Pi and that there is π next to it?

If it was 9 in the morning that would be strange, yes. It's just a little joke to grab your attention, it's not the only animation on that panel. Here's a whole bunch of them: http://images.google.be/images?q=led+pharmacy+cross

The little cocktail glass above and below 3:14 is actually supposed to be the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowl_of_Hygieia

Well, that's probably why there's Pi next to to the time.

If it was indeed 3:14 it'd be night (afternoon would be 15:14), and there's sunlight in the picture.

Not everyone in Europe uses the 24h clock, many people use AM/PM on their digital watches.

EDIT: Okay, I give up. In a major procrastination attack, I looked up the street in Google Maps Street View, and the LED sign clearly shows 24h time:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=nl&...

I'll stop short of calling up the pharmacy and asking for the manufacturer of the sign...

EDIT: Amazingly hard to find other clocks in the image! However, on the blog ( http://blog.paris-26-gigapixels.com/en/?p=115 ) we find:

"15:15: The light was so exceptional that we decided to redo the first 2 lines of the shooting. This series of images may be used in assembly later (just in case)."

This seems to be not inconsistent with the picture being taken around 3:14 PM.

> I'll stop short of calling up the pharmacy

What kind of hacker are you? :)

How is it being 15h15 not consistent with a clock reading 3:14? They are 1 minute out.

I thought it was one of the Easter Eggs as explained above.

Not INconsistent :) But yes, it appears to be an easter egg.

"Not INconsistent"

FWIW if I said "how is it not inconsistent" (as you appear to suggest I should) that would suggest I believe it is inconsistent and was asking in what way I'm wrong.

"how is it not consistent" means that I consider a clock in a photo reading 1 minute different to the expected time is entirely consistent with expected observations. I'm asking you in what way my affirmation that this is consistent with expectations is wrong. I could have asked "how is it inconsistent" but that would lack the emphasis and fail to indicate my view of consistency in the situation.

Right. I thought you had misread my sentence, sorry.

I phrased it this way because I felt saying that it is 'consistent' might give the impression that I see it as some kind of proof of my theory, while 'not inconsistent' suggests it is simply not disproved by the known data (which may not be totally reliable either).

This (flash) site has sound. Horrible annoying, and unexpected sound.

Where was it taken? On top of St Sulplice?

There are some “making of” blog posts linked at the bottom of that page: http://blog.paris-26-gigapixels.com/en/?p=115

(yes, St. Sulpice)

What are all those orange cones on top of buildings? I don't remember seeing those when I was in Paris 5 years ago.

Chimneys (specifically, the venting caps (“chimney pots”) on top of chimneys). Here's a Wikipedia image of similar chimneys in London: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chimney.stack.london.arp.j...

It's a bizarre world when people need to be told what a chimney pot is.

Not really. I've never seen anything like it here in the states before.

Huh, interesting. Seeing all of them there is oddly hypnotic.

Peeping Tom's playground