Garibaldi Panorama on Surface

One of the things I think holds the most promise for Microsoft technologies like Deep Zoom, Photosynth, and multitouch, is the deep exploration of art and artifacts. It's one thing to read about a place or device, but it's another to be able to explore every facet of an object on your own.

Brown University has teamed together with Microsoft Research and created an application for Microsoft Surface that will be used as the centerpiece in an exhibition on the future of digital scholarship. In this exhibit, a five-foot tall, football-field-length print can be explored, magnified, annotated, and overlaid with other images and videos. This is an unprecedented way of exploring artifacts and a big step forward for digital curation.