Entries tagged with live labs - Channel 10

Photosynth Comes To Live Maps

sarahintampa — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 02:24:00 GMT

There’s a new feature now available on Live Maps: Photosynth! The Microsoft Live Labs technology, Photosynth, which launched publicly back in August, allows you take your photos and turn them into rich, 3-D experiences. Now, with the new Live Maps integration, you can explore the world in the very same way as you explored your own synthed photos.

As you navigate in a map or zoom in or out in a particular location in Live Maps, you can choose to display pushpins for each Photosynth available in that area. You then just click the “launch Photosynth viewer” link to dive in and start exploring those synths.

You can try this now in Seattle, in Cairo at the Sphinx, in Vatican city, or at the Leaning tower of Pisa, for example.

The Sphinx – Cairo, Egypt

Photosynths are not shown by default in Live Maps, but are a part of the user-generated collections feature. Turning them on is easy, though - here’s how:

1) Search for for any location where synths may be available or manually drag your map there. Try “Paris,” for example.

2) Turn on Explore mode (Click Collections –> Explore collections). This turns on all the user-generated content, not just synths.

3) Filter to display just synths: At the top of the Explore panel, press the Photosynth button.

4) Now you’ll see just the synths display.

5) Enjoy!

Note: to explore Photosynths, you must have already installed the Photosynth viewer found here.

New From Live Labs: Political Streams

sarahintampa — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 04:56:00 GMT

The Live Labs team has just released a new project, Political Streams, and just in time as the U.S. Presidential election draws near. The site mines social media from across the internet, including blogs, newsgroups, and web sites, in order to track what stories are popular and if that popularity is increasing or decreasing.

When you click into an article on Political Streams, you’ll see a snippet of text from the article’s start and a link to the source if you’re interested in reading the complete story. Beneath this text are charts and graphs that show the attention the people and places mentioned in that particular story have seen over time. On the right, you’ll also see links to related information like other articles on news sites and blogs as well as links to people and places. Those people and places are generated by leveraging the API from the online open database project, Freebase.

The Political Streams site was built on the Social Streams platform, a platform that mines the social web for data. BLEWS, an earlier project by Microsoft Research, was also built on this platform.

How To Use Photosynth In 4 Easy Steps

sarahintampa — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 05:01:00 GMT

So now that you’ve heard the big news about Photosynth, you’re probably dying to get started with your first synth. Well, get your camera ready, because here’s all you need to know as to how to use this new technology

STEP 1: TAKE PICTURES

When you’re creating your first synth, remember the rule of “3” – each part of the scene you shoot should appear in at least 3 separate photos from different locations. Try for at least 50% overlap when taking the pictures. Take a panamora shot and then move around – the wider the shot, the better.

STEP 2: EDITS

Photographers usually want to do all kinds of tweaking to pics, but with Photosnyth, there are things you don’t want to do, such as the following:

don’t crop
don’t do any geometric transformations like flips and perspective transforms
don’t use artistic filters (de-noise may be safe, though)
don’t use watermarks (Photosynth provides something for this itself)

You can, however, adjust color and contrast without any worries.

STEP 3: SYNTH IT

If you haven’t already, download the free software from http://photosynth.com. The software works alongside the web site, also a free service. From the Photosynth site, click on “Create” and pick the pictures you want to use. Give your creation a name and click on “Synth.” Photosynth automatically creates and uploads your synth which can then be accessed from any XP or Vista PC.

STEP 4: SHARE IT

Your finished synth can be embedded on web sites, blogs, social networks, or any other page where HTML can be edited. You can see other people’s synths that they’ve created and leave comments, too.

ShutterSpeed EP04 - The Photosynth Team

Nic — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 18:00:00 GMT

By now most of you have probably heard of Photosynth. The cool new technology from Microsoft that allows you to explore collections of full resolution photos by relationship in an amazing, interactive 3D space.

From today (9PM PST) Photosynth is being released to the public which means anyone with access to a digital camera, PC and internet connection can create their own Photosynth collections. Just visit photosynth.net, download the app (approx 8MB) and start synthing.

To coincide with the release of Photosynth to the masses we thought it might be fun to sit down with 1/5th of the development team behind the technology to learn some more about how Photosynth works and how best to go about creating collections of photos specifically for synthing.

Joining me for this episode of ShutterSpeed is Live Labs and Photosynth Architect Blaise Aguera y Arcas (who you might recognize from this infamous TED presentation), Scientist Drew Steedley and Program Manager Scott Fynn.

Check out Max's interview with Rick Szeliski and Noah Snavely over on Channel 8 for more on the genesis (and genius!) of Photosynth. And for those of you about to grab your camera and go shoot some photos for a little synth action make sure you first watch Laura's how-to-synth video for tips and tricks.

Vídeo - A Microsoft Live Labs lança o Photosynth

Galileu — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 00:04:00 GMT

O Live Labs é o braço da Microsoft Research que faz pesquisa e desenvolvimento especificamente para a Internet. Do pessoal do Live Labs já saiu, por exemplo, o Deep Zoom, um componente de destaque do Silverlight 2.0. Agora, mais uma novidade do pessoal do Live Labs – o Photosynth está aberto para o uso de todos.

Para quem não conhece, o Photosynth é uma forma completamente inovadora de vivenciar as suas fotos digitais. Em vez de ver fotos individuais tiradas no mesmo local, o Photosynth consegue encaixar todas as fotos no seu lugar correto num espaço tridimensional. A tecnologia analisa as suas fotos, identifica os pontos de sobreposição e utiliza essa informação para reconstruir um espaço gráfico 3D e nele encaixar cada foto em seu devido lugar. O usuário não precisa fazer nada além de alimentar as suas fotos – o Photosynth cuida de tudo.

Existem algumas regras básicas para criar um bom synth, por isso recomendo ver o vídeo legendado desse post que mostra os passos iniciais. Depois, baixe o guia em português que entra em maiores detalhes com dicas importantes e assuntos para fotógrafos avançados.

O site do Photosynth utiliza Live ID para autenticação. Se você tem Hotmail ou usa o Windows Live Messenger, é o mesmo login e senha desses serviços. Lá, você terá direito a 20GB de espaço para armazenar os seus synths. Para usar o Photosynth é preciso instalar um plug-in de 8MB que roda em Internet Explorer 6 e 7 ou Firefox 2 e 3 para Windows XP e Windows Vista. O site permite comentários dos usuários, compartilhamento via link direto para o synth e, o mais bacana, você pode embed, ou incorporar, o synth no seu próprio site via iframe. É só copiar e colar o código.

Para o lançamento, estamos com vários parceiros produzindo conteúdo interessante. National Geographic, o governo federal americano, o governo nacional da Turquia, NASCAR, entre outros. Aqui no Brasil a Microsoft trabalhou com a agência Megaphoto e seu fotógrafo Rodrigo Acedo para testar a tecnologia. Eles produziram uns synths bem bacanas da Catedral da Sé e do Monumento às Bandeiras.

Catedral da Sé - São Paulo

Monumento às Bandeiras - São Paulo

Acho que todos vão achar o Photosynth bacana. Não se esqueçam de colocar tags nas suas fotos, e coloquem a tag Brasil para que o mundo possa encontrar nosso conteúdo bem fácil. Mais um detalhe, você pode marcar o geoposicionamento dos seus synths. Depois do synth aparecer no site, entre nele para editá-lo e lá aparecerá um ícone de um globo. Clique nele para ver o Virtual Earth e apontar no mapa o local de seu synth.

Dê um pulo no www.photosynth.com, veja os synths que estão lá e crie os seus próprios synths. Se encontrar ou criar algo bacana, mande aqui pra mim!

Live Labs Shadow Box on the Surface

Nic — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 13:57:00 GMT

Now this is cool. Jeff Weir and John Lynn work in the Microsoft Live Labs team (that's the group that created Photosynth). They also have a couple of Surface units in their office. So the two of them came up with an idea to build a little application called Shadow Box (or unofficially "nightmare box") that 'burns' in and out images of what the infrared camera inside the surface sees. The end result is both awesome and spooky! Check out the video of Shadow Box in action.

More on Live Labs: http://labs.live.com/

Congrats to Live Labs' Jeff Weir

Larry — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 02:29:00 GMT

Jeff Weir is a UX Designer in Microsoft's Live Labs. Between free alcohol, parties, more alcohol, more parties, and a general lack of sleep, Jeff managed to win the South by Southwest (SXSW) Web Award in the Art category. Jeff's application, Viscosity, is a modern art generator.

Viscosity kind of reminds me of some of Shirley Shor's work that was featured on Celebrity Apprentice last week. While I looked at Shirley's vastly expensive framed LCD panel playing through moving artwork, I thought to myself "Hey, I could make that with an old Tablet PC... well, except for the moving art part." Well, now I think I'll just frame a spare Tablet PC and direct it to Jeff's Viscosity watch page. Very cool. Congrats Jeff.

Vídeo: Zumobi para Windows Mobile

Galileu — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 09:42:00 GMT

O Zumobi foi lançado semana passada para celulares com Windows Mobile. A equipe do Zumobi saiu da Microsoft onde trabalhava junto ao time do Live Labs - a galera responsável pelas tecnologias por trás de SeaDragon, Photosynth, Listas, Deepfish, e até produts Windows Live, entre outros. Para quem já mexeu com o Photosynth (você pode testar no site), a semelhança de navegação no Zumobi é clara. Utilizando os efeitos de zoom, a interface do Zumobi carrega o conteúdo sem a necessidade de utilizar uma interface de navegador Web. O conceito tecnológico vem da pesquisa com SeaDragon, cujos princípios são:
1. Velocidade de navegação independe do tamanho ou número de objetos
2. Desempenho depende somente na proporção de banda para pixels na tela

Veja nesse vídeo curto como funciona o Zumobi num Smartphone (aquele sem tela de toque) e você verá esse conceito em ação.

New Photosynth collection: Gyeongbok Palace in South Korea

Jesse — Fri, 18 May 2007 18:25:00 GMT

One of the things that makes Photosynth such an exciting Microsoft Live Labs project is its ability to bring the far corners of the world to your desk. This latest Photosynth exploration of Gyeongbok Palace in Seoul represents a 4,000 photos and a month’s worth of submissions. The result is an ancient Asian experience unlike any other on the web. As with previous coverage of Photosynth on Channel 10, the experience of moving through a 3D collection of images is very Blade Runner. Hopefully this also represents progress by the Live Labs team towards empowering all of you to help model your own world.

Live Labs launches Photosynth Technology Preview

Jesse — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 21:50:00 GMT

Photosynth has got to be the coolest creation from the whiz kids inside Microsoft Live Labs (as we've shown here on 10). Now they've decided the time is right to unleash their creation to the public. We've been playing with this internally at the 10 HQ for a few weeks and it's clear now that going back to any other photography experience just doesn't stand up.

Provided you meet the photosynth system requirements, download the tech preview for yourself, fill it full of last summer's vacation photos, and prepare to be impressed.