The Art of the Possible : photosynth

Photosynth on CNN & Presidential Inauguration

dsumner — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 14:06:53 GMT

Earlier this week I posted a note about how a silverlight version of photosynth was now available. You can now see that tool used in the context of the Presidential inauguration on CNN.com.

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2009/44.president/inauguration/themoment/

I think its great example of how images from different photographers using different cameras were able to capture a scene and link those images together to form a single view of a moment of history.

Photosynth viewer in Silverlight

dsumner — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 12:12:02 GMT

Many of you will now have had a chance to try out Photosynth which can be found at http://photosynth.net/

Photosynth can essentially stitch images together while maintaining ( if the image is shot correctly) the relative position of the image in relation to other images in three dimensions.

It you can then view these images using the photosynth viewer.

Earlier this week Microsoft announced the ability to playback photosynth images in a silverlight player.

The biggest impact of this is that photosynth viewing is that it is no longer dependant on the local machine. Therefore photosynths can now be viewed on PCs and MACs.

You can find more details about Photosynth and Silverlight here:

http://photosynth.net/silverlight/about.aspx

Take a look at the great barn in the sliverlight viewer.

Weekend: The Reith Lectures 2008.

dsumner — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 12:55:00 GMT

I don’t know how familiar you are with the Reith Lectures. They have been running for 60 years now. This years Lectures were actually presented last month, but I have only just managed to find the time to listen to them. The first lecture was presented at the British Library. Which is an intuition that Microsoft has also run a number of projects with including the Turning the Pages On line Gallery.

This year’s lectures were on the subject of China given by Professor Jonathon Spence. There is a wealth of comment and observation to be found on these lectures online. My own observations lead me to focus on the lecture concept and its delivery itself, as something we all could learn from.

There are some fascinating lecturers and locations we can all leverage. The first lectures I can ever recall watching are the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures. These were always, and still wonderfully inspiring and well presented lectures. Indeed the 2008 Lectures will be sponsored by Microsoft Research, and in the UK Channel 5 will be televising them. ( you can see an outline of the 2006 lectures here).

To me, this level of lecturing far outstrips any text book or web site. It forces you to be in the moment, to stretch to comprehend what is being said.

The value the web brings, is its ability to share at any time in any place with anyone. Another fascinating set of lectures which I often find time to watch are the TED lectures. You will also find Blaise Aguera y Arcas giving an overview of photosynth. You can watch the brief lecture below.

I often wish that more of us were in the mode of lecturing rather than just presenting.