:-) Actually, we are using the "original" behavior used by QTVR which was the first implementation of interactive panoramic images on computers back in the 1990's. It is the paradigm that you are the camera, and you are moving your eyes.
The click/drag paradigm is good for maps, because it uses the analogy that you are grabbing and moving a map.
Anyway, this is a huge debate these days in the pano photography community. It seems that google streetview / google earth are somewhat winning at this point in terms of this type of navigation....
Oops! We forgot to limit the maximum FOV. you are referring to a field of view of 140º which is, yes, crazy! we'll switch it so that its' limited to 110º when you zoom out.
Incidentally, photos can be shown in many different projections. Rectilinear is the "normal" kind. For more fun, you can right-click on the panorama, and select other projections, including stereographic and little planet. these can show a much larger FOV and still look ok, because they curve some of the lines which makes the edges look not quite so "stretched".
There is also something called the "vedutismo" or "panini" projection, which was used a lot by renaissance painters. this can show a very large FOV but it keeps lines straight if they go to a vanishing point. you can see it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlK075yE6g4 or on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/groups/vedutismo/
That's not very nice. Maybe I'll make a gigapixel image of your face after I give you a knuckle sandwich.
Just kidding. :-))
Seriously, there is no BS in the Tech Crunch article. If you want my direct thoughts on it, here is my blog post, which is a lot shorter than the Tech Crunch and the Wired articles.
This was the output filesize from the stitcher, it was PSB (photoshop large document) format.
I think it was so big because it saved the file with an alpha channel which was not entirely necessary in this particular instance. And with some further lossless compression I could probably get the file down to 100GB or so.
Yeah, funnily enough, at the beginning when he is naming all the other collaboration tools out there (including google docs) he doesn't mention Wave....