Spent the weekend doing Local Guides

[PittsburghJon]

I had some old airline points that were about to expire.  But it was a very, very small amount of points, not even enough to fly anywhere.  I did some looking around the airline point website and realized, I had just enough to get a single cheap hotel night.  So this might sound weird to some people, but I took a mini-vacation this weekend in my own town, about 25 miles from my house.  It's a part of town that I normally don't go to, but this gave me an excuse to go to that area.

I left without much of a plan on what to do during this mini-vacation, but I didn't want to spend much money, so I spent the vast majority of the weekend going store to store photographing and getting information about the locations for local guides.  I added about 500 photos to about 200 locations.  A lot of those pictures where photospheres with my new photosphere camera, it's been great getting to experiment with it.

I don't have a car, I took the bus out there, and walked to all the locations.  The hotel was really in a perfect spot, there are stores and restaurants in every direction; so I walked to the stores in one direction, then went back to the hotel and relaxed a little, then went the other direction and went back to the hotel and relaxed a little, and so on.

In 2016 I did a similar type of local guides trip on a larger scale in New York City, but I wasn't active on the local guides forum back then so I didn't share the NYC experience on here.

I got back home Sunday evening and spend the last few hours uploading all the pictures, and writing reviews, and correcting some of the location info for the stores.  Some times I see people post on here and ask for tips on how to get points, well, there's really no shortcuts, you have to put in the time and effort.  But in the end it's all rewarding knowing how much it helps others.

Some people might find this strange way to spend a weekend, but I'm sure some of you get it, and understand what a great weekend it was.

🙂

[EhsanD]

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@JonathanHsu wrote:

I had some old airline points that were about to expire.  But it was a very, very small amount of points, not even enough to fly anywhere.  I did some looking around the airline point website and realized, I had just enough to get a single cheap hotel night.  So this might sound weird to some people, but I took a mini-vacation this weekend in my own town, about 25 miles from my house.  It's a part of town that I normally don't go to, but this gave me an excuse to go to that area.

I left without much of a plan on what to do during this mini-vacation, but I didn't want to spend much money, so I spent the vast majority of the weekend going store to store photographing and getting information about the locations for local guides.  I added about 500 photos to about 200 locations.  A lot of those pictures where photospheres with my new photosphere camera, it's been great getting to experiment with it.

I don't have a car, I took the bus out there, and walked to all the locations.  The hotel was really in a perfect spot, there are stores and restaurants in every direction; so I walked to the stores in one direction, then went back to the hotel and relaxed a little, then went the other direction and went back to the hotel and relaxed a little, and so on.

In 2016 I did a similar type of local guides trip on a larger scale in New York City, but I wasn't active on the local guides forum back then so I didn't share the NYC experience on here.

I got back home Sunday evening and spend the last few hours uploading all the pictures, and writing reviews, and correcting some of the location info for the stores.  Some times I see people post on here and ask for tips on how to get points, well, there's really no shortcuts, you have to put in the time and effort.  But in the end it's all rewarding knowing how much it helps others.

Some people might find this strange way to spend a weekend, but I'm sure some of you get it, and understand what a great weekend it was.

🙂

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Hey @PittsburghJon
This is truly amazing and inspiring as well.

Thanks for sharing your "Local Guide Trip".

I was really curious to know what that isolated spot on the right side of the area top-view was thus I found it and then I checked all your submitted photos on that day! I really liked your 360 photos specially that dedicated gentleman who turned out to be a fan of Pittsburgh Pirates as well 😉

Reviewing your photos was amazing because I could review what you have shared here on the map with breakfast and lunch!

Questions:

1. Since you were taking hundreds photos (some with your photo-sphere camera), have you encountered any issues with the business owners?
2. How did you upload those photos on the Google Maps? Batch upload or one by one?
3. Since you have 100k+ photos, how do you scroll them if you want to check let's say your 50,000th submitted photo?

Have a great week

[PittsburghJon]

@EhsanD I'm impressed you were able to find them just from that screenshot lol

1. On that day, no I didn't have any problems with business owners.  But on previous days, yes i've been question about why i'm taking photos.

2. The photosperes are through the Street View app; they are done one at a time.  The standard photos, I waited until I got home, then did them on my computer.  They still have to be uploaded one location at a time.  But for example I probably took 30 pictures of a wal-mart, uploaded all 30 of those was in bulk, you just select them all at once.

3.  Yes, that's an issue, Google lets you keep scrolling down and down the page of photos.  I wish they had multiple pages.  But I doubt they will change that because 99% of users don't have that many photos.

If I want to look back at old photos, I can just find that location on the map, then look at the photos from there

[EhsanD]

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@JonathanHsu wrote:

@EhsanD I'm impressed you were able to find them just from that screenshot lol

1. On that day, no I didn't have any problems with business owners.  But on previous days, yes i've been question about why i'm taking photos.

2. The photosperes are through the Street View app; they are done one at a time.  The standard photos, I waited until I got home, then did them on my computer.  They still have to be uploaded one location at a time.  But for example I probably took 30 pictures of a wal-mart, uploaded all 30 of those was in bulk, you just select them all at once.

3.  Yes, that's an issue, Google lets you keep scrolling down and down the page of photos.  I wish they had multiple pages.  But I doubt they will change that because 99% of users don't have that many photos.

If I want to look back at old photos, I can just find that location on the map, then look at the photos from there

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Thank you @PittsburghJon for quick responses.

Actually, there are many clues in the screenshot!

Regarding the (3), I think even though majority of local guides have less than couple thousands photos but still adding search option within them especially by "business type" would be awesome. 

[JeanRV]

Dear JonathanH,

Thanks for this great post and congratulation for your contribution!

I bet you staid at the Econo Lodge Inn & Suites during your mini-vacation, I understand it was a great week end. 

Would you recommand your new photosphere camera? The 2017 samsung gear 360 wiill be available in France on May 5th. I consider buying one, any idea about this camera?

Cheers