VERY cool image software - Photosynth

**dbp** · 06-09-2007, 11:52 AM

Seadragon and Photosynth

I don't normally get excited about projects that Microsoft is involved with, but I am really glad I watched this demo. Once the speaker starts talking about Photosynth, I went from "yeah, that is pretty cool" to "oh, wow" to "holy crap". By the time he was done with the social aspects of the cathedral demo, I was having a hard time grasping all the possibilities. For instance, imagine a ski resort version of the cathedral demo with named runs and such. It seems like tech you see in a movie and think "that is really cool but unrealistic". Neat neat stuff.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/129

Video is a little long, but well worth watching. I haven't looked at the working online demo. I don't think it works on Windows 2K. Very cool stuff coming out of TED this year.

**brice618** · 06-09-2007, 12:22 PM

Holllly sickness! That rocks, what a sweet concept.

**Benny Profane** · 06-09-2007, 12:27 PM

That's pretty cool, but it hurts my head. And I don't see money in it outside mapping stuff.

And that dude is well on his way to 40 year old virginhood.

**The Dad** · 06-09-2007, 05:35 PM

Cool shit.

But yeah, he's definitely tugging little Blaise.

**dbp** · 06-09-2007, 05:54 PM

Well either that or guy has a wife and kid.

http://www.princeton.edu/~blaisea/

...so yeah, probably not a lot of sex going on actually.

**Gunder** · 06-09-2007, 06:28 PM

That program SCARES the shit out of me.... While it is rad technology, they are basically saying fuck copyright law.

**dbp** · 06-09-2007, 06:39 PM

Originally Posted by Gunder

That program SCARES the shit out of me.... While it is rad technology, they are basically saying fuck copyright law.

Yeah, I would hope that the images they "scrape" are from databases people have opted into with knowledge they might be used in this way. My attitude about those kind of applications always depends on exactly how they are used. If say I have a program on my local machine that grabs tagged public images off of Flickr and displays them in a screensaver type slideshow... that is one thing. If Microsoft decides "all your photos are belong to us" and uses others' copyrighted work to create something larger to market and sell... that is another thing. In my mind at least.

**The Dad** · 06-10-2007, 12:45 AM

We could have a long and interesting discussion about fair use, but the pragmatic bottom line is that courts tend to find that it exists when there's no market for licensing the rights in question, and no realistic plans to create one.