Comment Feed for PhotoSynth: What. How. Why. (Going Deep on Channel 9)

Re: PhotoSynth: What. How. Why.

Richard.Hein — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 23:40:40 GMT

Oh Steve, you are regretting that perhaps now that you have seen Surface and Silverlight using SeaDragon technology. [H]

Re: PhotoSynth: What. How. Why.

goldentorc — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 07:44:23 GMT

Interestingly, I know for a fact that Blaise gave a demo of the zooming technology to Steve Jobs at Apple HQ in early June 2003 - Steve decided to pass on the technology at the time, saying that Apple was 'already doing that'. I guess we'll see if Leopard's resolution independence provides anything as cool and smooth as this. I hope it does, but I haven't yet seen anything as good as Blaise's demo.

Re: PhotoSynth

BigMTBrain — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 20:26:20 GMT

The phrase "paradigm shift" is often misused, over used and abused. It takes only the slightest imagination and awareness to see that the insights that led to Photosynth are indeed the beginnings of a paradigm shift, part of the steadily accelerating advance towards the so-called technological singularity.

While much of its application is embodied and embedded in the web, I believe the strength of the impact of Photosynth and its cloud of applications will be at least that of Google and perhaps even the web itself. It is a bold statement, but it will even rank higher than the advent of television.

It's not as though pieces of this technology haven't been brewing for quite some time in the minds of many (including my big empty brain). But sometimes magic happens... someone asks "I wonder if..." and proceeds to test their hypothesis. Others recognize the discovery's significance and the future is changed. Not in a small evolutionary step, but in a huge revolutionary flight. And it comes in a rush and a flash as connections are made in the imagination of another, then another, and still another.

While the web brought us connections and information, and Google brought us needles from the haystack, nothng is more potent than immediately touching the senses directly without a process of interpretation. Photosynth will do that; it will bring us the world, visually. And even more...

The universe is a hierarchy of emergent systems, including each of us individually and our emergent societies. Photosynth will modify us individually and socially. And even more... it will bring massive and coherent sight and visual correlation across space and time (omnipresence, or at least omni-sightedness) to whatever that next level of emergence is, or is shaping up to be.

Whew! Got carried away there... um, maybe.

Now, be sure to take photos with those 15 second sound bites. They'll create a wash of 3D-aural delight when the similarly registered bells toll in the cathedral square or the sax man plays his tune as you windowshop down the mag-mile in Chicago. Oh, and tell them to hurry and get those bio- and enviro- sensors embedded in the next gen cellphones--man does not virtualize by sight alone!

>-Edit-<

Well, hold on... this just in... Reported Nov. 1st, 06 on ScienceDaily:

Researchers Teach Computers How To Name Images By 'Thinking'

Penn State researchers have "taught" computers how to interpret images using a vocabulary of up to 330 English words, so that a computer can describe a photograph of two polo players, for instance, as "sport," "people," "horse," "polo."

Read full article here.

That combined with this, even better.

Re: PhotoSynth

Deco — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 20:25:18 GMT

Hi,

Do you know when this is available to download in the UK?........:@

Re: PhotoSynth:

Deco — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 20:23:15 GMT

Hi,

I've read about PhotoSynth on 'on10.net' and really want a closer look...

Do you know when it is available to download in the UK?

Re: PhotoSynth: What. How. Why.

samirsshah — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 17:12:14 GMT

Suddenly, taking a lot of essentially free pictures (no film) of a structure with a digital camera makes a lot of sense. After PhotoSynth has been released and is easy to use, it will revolutionize real estate because it will be very easy to show a 3D visit of a house once a lot of pictures are taken. It will also increase sales of digital camera memory modules (one module for a set of pictures of a structure). It will also affect flickr partially. Flickr mostly has two kinds of pictures, people and structures, structures part of the pictures will require something like this because now (after PhotoSynth), a set of pictures together are more important than an individual picture.

Re: PhotoSynth: What. How. Why.

HipCzeck — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 16:21:29 GMT

Suggestion: If a bunch of photos are stitched together in 3D space, some of which contain GPS info in the EXIF metadata, it should be pretty easy to calculate GPS data for the untagged photos in the mesh and assign them appropriately.

I don't have a GPS and have been searching for an easy way to blast that info into my photos.

Re: PhotoSynth: What. How. Why.

BobTurbo — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 14:08:35 GMT

That is absolutely amazing. I can see it changing the way people navigate their photo collections for starters.

Re: PhotoSynth: What. How. Why.

dentaku — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 23:03:59 GMT

There's a demo of a lightbox app that Jeff Han did when he was demoing his "interface-free," touch-driven computer screen that reminded me of Photosynth.
http://ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=j_han&flashEnabled=1

http://mrl.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirtouch/

Their touch screen and Photosynth would work so well together. I just hope they aren't the type of people who wouldn't consider colaborating with Blaise and company just because he's part of MS now. :@

Re: PhotoSynth: What. How. Why.

gswitz — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 22:25:57 GMT

Consider sharing with the Nasa group that gave us World Wind?

Re: PhotoSynth: What. How. Why.

theshadguy — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 01:17:42 GMT

Forget all the possiblities for medical uses or astronomy.

When I saw this video (and later checked out the website), this whole....thing (idea, program, heck even icon) screamed Apple! It seems like something Apple would have done. It makes me a little sad MSFT (er, Seadragon) did it, and not Apple. But I am happy nonetheless (and very much impressed) that Microsoft did do something like this.

It is truely stunning. But what I would really like to see is for this to open up somehow/get ported to other platforms. I don't care if it goes opensource, but I would just LOVE to use this instead of iPhoto (yet still have it integrate with all the other apps).

Obviously, I am a Mac user, but that doesn't mean I have to hate everything else. It really feels like something I would see on a Mac. Blaise, if you're listening, I hope that if it can't be brought over to the good side that it at least gets the integration it deserves on it's own platform. I think that's one thing MS could really learn from Apple (well, NeXT actually) and that's the fact apps should work together, and it shouldn't be hard for one thing to work with another.

Re: PhotoSynth: What. How. Why.

theshadguy — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 01:17:07 GMT

Forget all the possiblities for medical uses or astronomy. When I saw this video (and later checked out the website), this whole....thing (idea, program, heck even icon) screamed Apple! It seems like something Apple would have done. It makes me a little sad MSFT (er, Seadragon) did it, and not Apple. But I am happy nonetheless (and very much impressed) that Microsoft did do something like this. It is truely stunning. But what I would really like to see is for this to open up somehow/get ported to other platforms. I don't care if it goes opensource, but I would just LOVE to use this instead of iPhoto (yet still have it integrate with all the other apps). Obviously, I am a Mac user, but that doesn't mean I have to hate everything else. It really feels like something I would see on a Mac. Blaise, if you're listening, I hope that if it can't be brought over to the good side that it at least gets the integration it deserves on it's own platform. I think that's one thing MS could really learn from Apple (well, NeXT actually) and that's the fact apps should work together, and it shouldn't be hard for one thing to work with another.

Re: PhotoSynth: What. How. Why.

plasmashow — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 20:00:04 GMT

Hi , its about time microsoft got involved , I have been looking for a platform to build out plamashow.tv as a visual HDTV channel experience to see and review any kind of product in detail tagged with audio or text descriptions. Have looked at kakadu software that is based on jpeg2000, hope we can test a beta test server/client soon.

Re: PhotoSynth: What. How. Why.

superhighstreet.com — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 18:58:56 GMT

blaise wrote:

OK, I joined!

This response has just been overwhelming. Thank you all!

...
cheers
Blaise

You're very welcome Blaise. We were bowled over by the video. We are currently building a new site which offers virtual interactive tours down streetscape panoramas from the world's most famous streets. Coming soon are London's Oxford Street and NYC's 5th Ave, and there are already a few beta streets on there right now. You can even click on the shop doors and 'walk inside' their online stores.
[H]

Would people like to see Superhighstreet.com's and Live Labs' technology merged? Perhaps now is an ideal time to discuss this further with you guys at Microsoft, that is if you agree there's an interesting partnership possibility there Blaise? Our mutual goals seem to be the same - the ultimate dream of an augmented reality where people from Indonesia can walk down a street in London and see all the 'sites'.
;)

We'd be very interested in feedback from anyone here on our site's usability and potential future ideas too. We're working hard to release Oxford Street within a couple of weeks, so join our updates list for a spam-free announcement then.

Keep up the amazing work. Can't wait to see the beta. Drop us a line if you like the idea of beating Google to it, as I hear they are working on a similar thing to A9's photo-street mapping (not quite what we're doing, as ours is of course higher resolution with sound effects etc.)
[A]

Enjoy!

Christian
Founder, Superhighstreet.com

Re: PhotoSynth: What. How. Why.

Ian — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 09:52:54 GMT

Gadzooks, I'm excited and I 've not seen the video yet (all I've done is read the comments!)

Re: PhotoSynth: What. How. Why.

franck_guigan — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 09:51:26 GMT

Hi,

One could believe that PhotoSynth has been conceived to work in association with Popims Animator and Popims Screens technology.

Visit www.popims.com and you will understand how it will work :

Photosynth takes a large collection of photos of a place or object, analyzes them for similarities, and displays them in a reconstructed 3-Dimensional space.
Starting from that, Popims Animator creates an interlaced image and prints it
The user places a Popims Screen on top of the print and vues the place or the object with a full 3D effect !

How can we discuss a cooperation between Popims and PhotoSynth ? please answer at
http://phototour.cs.washington.edu/applet/index.html

Re: P_Synth Applications

Rossj — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 18:41:58 GMT

Fantastic - this could be such a good way of recording archaeological sites than the current 2d photos and drawings, I am guessing the moment any archaeologists see this they will be knocking down your door - well done with that ..

Re: P_Synth Applications

jsampsonPC — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 17:47:08 GMT

ZippyV wrote:
Is this technology also able to create a 3d version from pictures of a person? I would guess this is more difficult since it's practically impossible for a person to keep the same position between 2 pictures at a different angle.

This technology is already in effect, and has been for well over a decade. This is the very technology toy-manufacturers use when developing models of super-heros, action-figures, etc.

I saw a demonstration on it; really exciting :)

My wife works in the dental field, and tells me of very interesting software they use for constructing crowns. She works on a large military base, so they have some pretty neat toys.

She just told me that when building the crown, they take a few pictures of the offending teeth with an intraoral camera, cut the teeth, retake a second set of photos of the modified teeth, and then feed the imagery into a computer.

At this time, a laser carves the new crown at a 1:1 ratio - pretty neat, huh!

Re: PhotoSynth: What. How. Why.

Ray of Minneapolis — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 15:47:30 GMT

Thank you! Thank you so much, gentlemen and lady developers.

I have been waiting for this for a few years, reading all the "computer vision" whitepapers as research continues.

I am currently in a project which aims to use 3d photogrametry to build a simulation of an art gallery. You just saved me from having to invent the software myself!!

I'm loving the

IDEAS!!

Time travel is going to be the big one. Time Traveler in a geowall based holodeck.. (dual polarized usb projector for xbox360?)

anyhow, I'm curious if there are more apps from this team on the drawing boards? VideoSynth being an obvious one. Pixel tracking from video proccessing yeilds point cloud results similar to PhotoSynth. Ya know.

PhotoSynth would make the idea front end for a new media quickening.

In my gallery simulator project, we are striving to provide the user with a rich newmedia experience inside the 3d model. Videos that can be watched, paintings that have amazing zoom and artist metadata, an authentic sound environment, etc.

PhotoSynth is a step in that direction eh?

I would LOVE to use it sooner then later. I'll definitly use it for an exhibition in October. Is there a special artist beta I can use today?!? Please release this as soon as possible.

I liked what someone was saying about not having an ecomomic core, it bases this work more in creativity. But you know, once you can fly around into stores, clicking somthing to buy it will be the hot eComerce way!

Another idea I can share from the Gallery Simulator project is an idea that opening events would be webcast. You just pixel track the camera person through the environment and path the feed to a moving "perspective window". This will be a new media technique for live news casts as well. (imagine a Google Earth.. er Microsoft Earth, with gps+video tracking of a live reporter in the feild, when they cover the next hurricane you can zoom out and see where other networks are reporting from or zoom WAY OUT to see the weather data)

Live Video perspective windows will be unspeakably cool when I'm flying around the football stadium deciding which "camera" to watch. From the cool instant replays they had last season, I think they're allready using this tecnology.

Get that launched in time for the SUPERBOWL ya'll. Microsoft partners with NFL. Did I earn my beta yet??

Ray Rolfe
SoapFactorySimulator dev group