Well today i found a solution for both problems. 

CleVR offers a possible solution with a free, embeddable Flash viewer for panorama photographs. Not only this but it offers the means to stitch photograph together either in the old javascript editor or in the new adobe air application.

Below there is a demonstration, which features my first trekking panorama .

You will have to zoom out a little bit to get a better overall picture.

Panorama of Vf. Toaca ( 1800m ) on CleVR.com

For PC’s you need to download and install Andrea Mosaic.

In order to build one i read it is recommended to have around 100 or so pictures, somewhere on your hard drive (My Documents / My Photos, etc.). They need to be all in one folder, they can be in sub folders in that main folder … but you cannot select multiple folders in your computer to import the images to be used for the mosaic. If you don’t have that many images, and you don’t want specific pictures to be used on the Andrea Mosaic website you can download a free colection of images to use with your mosaic.

Also i need to add that it is going to take a while for the mosaic to be build, and also you will probably build it several times because you will want to tweak the settings and images used to get a better result.

Have fun.

If you are on a shared server and dont know how to change your php configuration you might want to check this article also.

But enough talk and lets get right into it. I will write the configuration name, the recommended setting and how this helps your application.

short_open_tag = Off

This will turn off short tags ( <? …. ?> ) and have the php engine one problem less to worry about.

asp_tags = Off

Do not use ASP like tags: <% echo “hello world”; %>

memory_limit = 32M

This is one configuration that you might need to tweak once in a while. But for start it is better to set it to a lower value and adjusting it when you need it. This will help you keep track of your aplication memory usage.
An article about memory usage you can find here.

register_long_array = Off

This will tells PHP to not register the deprecated long $HTTP_*_VARS type predefined variables. The default value is On. Since almost nobody ever uses them any more ( unless they have some compatibilty problems with old scripts, and they need them on ) it’s recommended to turn them off, for performance reasons. Instead, use the superglobal arrays, like $_GET.

This directive became available in PHP 5.0.0 and was dropped in PHP 6.0.0.

register_argc_argv = Off

This is more or less the same with register_long_arrays referring mostly to GET informations so it should be set to Off as well.

auto_globals_jit = On

This makes php stop generating the SERVER and ENV variables at script start ( default behaver ) and generating them when needed (Just In Time). These should help performance by cutting down the memory used by your scripts.
For this to work you need to have register_globals, register_long_arrays, and register_argc_argv disabled.
As an inside info : i tried this on a server .. .and it didn’t seem to create any SERVER or ENV variables, but i guess it was the server configuration because on a different server it worked .

magic_quotes_gpc

From my experience having this on can be a real pain in the [****]. When this is on, all ‘ (single-quote), ” (double quote), \ (backslash) and NUL’s are escaped with a backslash automatically. Why this is bad ? because you dont have a control over it. For example you use a mysql wrapper for youre database interactions that already has an escape function, this will make your values double escaped, and you endup after a few submits with a bunch of backslashes. So better have it off and do your own escaping, and maybe use a cleaning function to prevent SQL Injection ( more info here )

always_populate_raw_post_data = Off

Raw Post data is one of the more advanced knowledge, so if you dont use it, relief php of it concern and set always_populate_raw_post_data = Off.

Download The Plugin
Photosop does not normaly support this format ( ICO ) but fortunate for you the guys at Telegraphics have developed a plugin for photoshop so you can export to the .ico file format. The plugin reads and writes ICO files in 1, 4 and 8-bit Indexed and 24-bit RGB modes, and also reads and writes 32-bit “XP” icons (with 8-bit alpha channel). You must have this plugin installed before you start working on the favicon.

Where do I put the plugin file?
After you extract the ZIP archive on Windows, or the SIT on Mac, you copy the file to the ‘Plug-ins’ folder, inside Photoshop’s application folder. On Windows, look under My Computer->C:->Program Files->Adobe->(your Photoshop version). On Mac, look in the Applications folder for Photoshop.

How do I check it’s properly installed?
Quit and re-launch Photoshop. Go to Photoshop’s “About Plug-ins” menu. If the plugin is listed, it’s correctly installed. Or look for the “Telegraphics” submenu of your Filters menu (for a filter), or the Save/Open formats menu (for a File Format).

Let’s Begin
As i told you the favicon is a very small icon that doesnt live you to much room to be creative. What i recomend to do is to first do you’re design on a 64 by 64 pixels canvas and when you are happy with you’re design resize it to 16 x 16 pixels. When you do the design keep in mind that the final size is going to be 16 x 16, so use as less elements as you can, and without to many effects ( borders, shadows ). Also the color palette used need’s to be cut back to a max of 2 colors ( it’s only a recomandation, the main thing is to make it look nice and clean ).

After you have spin you’re head around the problem enough and think you are happy with the result, you do the main test and resize it to the final size of 16 x 16 pixels. On the resize i would recomend to use “Bicubic Sharper” from the drop-down menu (CS only ). This insures that the images stays sharp and doesn’t blur as it’s being resized.

If you don’t like how it looks, then a quick CTRL+Z and keep trying until you are happy.

Saving The Favicon
Select the Save as Option in the File menu, and enter the name favicon.ico. Also you need to select the format Windows Icon (ICO) from the dropdown menu. This format is now available because you installed the plugin.

Uploading The Favicon.ico File
Conect to your server and upload your favicon file to your http root, in the same directory as you’re index page.

Now all you need to do is add to all you’re pages the code that helps you’re browsers to find the favicon.
Here is the link code to include:

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico">

Once you’ve added this code, upload all of your modified pages.Testing
If your new Favicon does not show up right away, try refreshing the page.

Inspiration
If you need some inspiration have a look through this nice collection of favicons. Also look at the nice categorized list of 50 remarkable favicons at Smashing Magazine. You might find something that triggers an idea for your own.

Hope you found this helpfull and i wait you’re critics and comments