gizblog

The next generation of photo sharing

  3D Flickr Emergence 
  Originally uploaded by jurvetson (thanks!)

TED had a very cool demonstration of 3D photo aggregation from a company recently acquired by Microsoft.

The image here is a composite of all the photos on Flickr tagged with the words "Notre Dame". The software looks at these photos and does three things. It works out what Notre Dame looks like and builds a composite 3D image from bits of the photos themselves (represented here by the ghostly blue - white image). It also works out the vantage points and viewing angles of the photographers in the Parvis Square outside (the orange triangles). It then wraps them both together in a 3D zoomable interface that feels as though you're flying, and enables you to easily view any of the photos that make up the image. Breath-taking.

Computer algorithms are not great at understanding what photos depict: (e.g.is it a sunset, a honeymoon, a particular beach in Spain, or all three?). The current generation of photo sites has overcome this by enabling people to add descriptive words to their photos ('tags') so that other people can discover them. Flickr does this brilliantly, and it's underpinned its explosive growth.

What photosynth does, cleverly, is to take this to the next level. If you get an algorithm to look at photos tagged with the same words (e.g. Notre Dame) it'll be able to figure out that the photos are of the same object, and then reaggregate those photos in interesting ways.

It'll be interesting to see where this leads, but an easy and obvious application is to develop 3D maps based on actual photos that you can walk or fly around. Microsoft's already on that case. It also points a way forward for navigating user generated images once there are unfathomable quantities available.

You need to see the demo to really get this, and it's at the following livelabs link (and it's worth waiting for all the relevant plug-ins....)

On Top Of The World

I promised that I wasn't going to cut and paste any more TED videos. But I couldn't not post this one.

I met Ben at the TED conference at Oxford, which we sponsored, but hadn't until now seen his speech. It's worth well worth watching, particularly for the wobbly video footage of someone standing, alone at the north pole, with the whole world spinning underneath them. Although when I described this to my daughter, she reminded me that he couldn't have been alone because Father Christmas must have been somewhere nearby.

Inspiring stuff from a great bloke, who we'll hopefully help get to the South Pole next year. For more info, and to sponsor a mile of his next expedition, go to bensaunders.com

Education and Creativity

Sir Ken Robinson's talk on creativity and education is entertaining, inspiring and, at times, moving. It only takes twenty minutes to watch, but you'll be thinking about it a lot longer.

And video distribution like this is a powerful new way of spreading ideas, or any sort of content for that matter.

Ashes and Snow

  Ashes and Snow (and Joseph) 
  Originally uploaded by devpd.

Gregory Colbert has spent the last 13 years capturing some astonishing photos and films of animals interacting with humans. The resulting exhibition is travelling the world, and I managed to see it in a spare couple of hours in Santa Monica before a flight home.

It's astonishing. The 'museum' is built out of stacked containers, and inside it is reverential, dark, and pebbled. Very atmospheric. I'd already seen Colbert talk about the project, and had seen some of the video. But seeing it on giant screens, at times frustratingly slow and long, hauntingly beautiful, and shared with dozens of others standing in silence was very moving. Not everything struck a chord, and some sequences seemed a little too 'arty'. But overall it was extraordinary, and yet again I particularly enjoyed its uncompromsing production values and integrity.

You can get some idea of it at Ashes and Snow and when it arrives near you, make the effort to go and see it.