Entries tagged with photos - Channel 10

Olympic Photosynths

Sarah Perez — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:31:00 GMT

Over on the Photosynth blog, they’ve rounded up the top contributions from users who submitted Photosynth’d collections from the recent Winter Olympics. Over the past several weeks, there have been over 40 different synths from the games added to the online gallery, including contributions from the following synthers:

Rick, beatnavy, fjcwhistler, siblog, cgsguy2, Mooseboys, MidnightFrog, rieskame, erickoo, BDsynth,Onyxmoon63, singalittlesong, kriskrug, GaryGlanz, brad_dennis, bal, jessica.glago, neilbl, msnbc.com,jimcseke, Lit, aeolien

(Click through on any of their names to see their Photosynth submissions.)

The top synths – aka the “most viewed” – included those featuring the sports themselves like luge, skating, curling, and skiing in addition to synths from Vancouver and those from other major events like the torch lighting, for example.

You can see some of these favorite synths in the image below:

For more Olympic action, head to the Photosynth site and search for Olympics.

Microsoft Research Works on "Mental Tagging" of Images

Sarah Perez — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 15:20:00 GMT

One of the most tedious things to do when uploading a collection of photos to the web is tag them. Although doing so ensures they can be easily found later either by yourself or the online community at large, the process is often time-consuming and cumbersome. A number of technologies have been developed to improve on image tagging, including things like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk which pays people small amounts to tag online photos to online games which attempt to make tagging fun.

However, Microsoft Research is working on a process that sounds like it would be the best yet – if it works. The researchers are developing technology that reads your mind in order to tag the photos for you. According to an article on singularityhub.com, this mind-reading machine uses an EEG to measure the brain activity created by looking at an image. Although EEGs only provide general guidelines (as opposed to exact object names), says the article, the researchers were able to tell whether a person was looking at a picture of a face, an inanimate object, or an animal. Amazing!

You can read more about this project headed by researcher Desney Tan here (PDF).

Berlin Wall in Silverlight

Sarah Perez — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 19:13:00 GMT

In case you missed it last month, the world celebrated the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. To memorialize this historic event, a digital project has been created whose goal is to become the largest photo mosaic in the world. Called the BerlinMOSAIC, the project is a virtual art activity created by Sascha Ackermann and Lars Beckmann. To participate, everyone worldwide is encouraged to upload their own photos to the project by tagging them with “20jmf” on photo-sharing sites Picasa or Flickr or by including “#20jmf” on any Twitter update linking to a TwitPic you want to include. Another option is to manually upload photos directly through the website itself. (Here's how).

The end result is a virtual manifestation of the wall’s fall created with the thousands of pictures added by the community. Since the site uses Silverlight, you can zoom in and out and move all around the wall using the built-in controls.

You can check out the Berlin Wall mosaic on either of the two sites hosting it - here or here.

(via UX Connection)

Flickr Drive Integrates Flickr into Windows Explorer

Sarah Perez — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 20:37:00 GMT

The Life Rocks blog recently uncovered a Windows Explorer extension that integrates Flickr right into Explorer. Called Flickr Drive, the program creates a drive icon representing the popular photo-sharing website under “Computer” in Windows Vista or Windows 7. Once installed, you must first authenticate with your Flickr account and allow the program access. You can also choose whether you want to see your friends and family’s accounts too. After the setup is complete, you can then browse through the online photos just as if they were stored on your own hard drive. And as with any photos stored locally, you can edit photo tags or drag-and-drop them from Flickr to your computer and vice versa. You can also browse photosets, delete photos, and even do a search by tag.

The application uses the Flickr API over the internet, so the speed with which you can browse through the files will be heavily dependent on your own internet connection speeds. Since I’m on FiOS, I didn’t see much of a delay, but your experience may differ.

Both a downloadable executable and source code are provided for the Flickr Drive program from the project’s homepage here.

Turn MS Paint Sketches into Actual Photos

Sarah Perez — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:41:00 GMT

A research team made up of members from several Chinese universities has created a new system which transforms sketches into photographs. That means that any simple drawing you create in basic software like MS Paint can instantly be turned into a full-color photograph. To use the system, all you have to do is create a drawing and label the different objects by name. Then, PhotoSketch, as the system is called, locates corresponding images from the system’s massive library and turns your sketch into a photo by seamlessly stitching together the various pieces.

Unfortunately, the actual PhotoSketch site appears to be down at the moment, most likely thanks to the large amounts of traffic they’ve received over the past few days due to media coverage. When it comes back online, though, it’s definitely something worth checking out. Just bookmark this URL for future reference: http://cg.cs.tsinghua.edu.cn:8080/cmm/?page_id=155

Photosynth's New Features: Highlights and Cross-Platform Viewer

Sarah Perez — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 14:42:00 GMT

I missed this update from earlier this month, but it looks like Microsoft Photosynth has added a couple of new features. The first new feature is really more of a change than anything else. It seems the previously experimental cross-platform Silverlight viewer is now being promoted to become the main viewer for Photosynth. The embedding code has also been moved to Silverlight so your synth embeds can be shared around the web. Also, the controls within the Silverlight viewer have been updated based on user feedback. All the controls have now been consolidated in the bottom center of the viewer for easy access.

With the move to Silverlight, there’s a lower frame rate, the Photosynth team acknowledged in a blog post, but they’re working to improve the performance so the Silverlight viewer can be more feature rich and match or even outperform the old one. They say that the move was “one step back” but really was “two steps forward” since it allows Mac users to fully participate on the website and the editing and highlighting features can be built right into the viewer code.

Another new feature is called “Synth Highlights.” This feature lets you pinpoint the best spots within a synth which are shown in a small sidebar to the right of the 3D image. You can simply click through the highlights to travel through the synth without missing any of the good stuff. Here are a couple of examples: Nellie Inglerock - Masonic Cemetery and Art Gallery of New South Wales.

To add highlights to your synth, look for the “Edit Synth and Highlights” link in the right area of your synth (you have to be logged in first). Then find a great photo, optionally title and/or caption it, and click “Add Highlight.” Click “Save,” and you’re done.

Advanced Image Editing in Windows Live Photo Gallery

Sarah Perez — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:18:00 GMT

The Microsoft Image Composite Editor (ICE) is a tool created by Microsoft Research which can be used to create panoramic images. It’s essentially the same technology that Windows Live Photo Gallery uses “under the hood” when you create panoramic photos in the software (just like Alexa does in the latest commercial – and lest you think these kids are far more tech savvy than you – I can assure you that the process is dead simple).

But unlike the panoramic technology that runs in WLPG, the ICE software provides a few extra features, too. The most important one is the orientation tool. With this, you can change the orientation of a photo to give the impression that a tilt/shift lens was used. For example:

You could also use a perspective projection instead of a cylindrical one with the tool. Example:

Or you could set the mid-point of a 360-degree panorama:

ICE also adds a variety of export options including Deep Zoom and HD View. Use ICE to export to either of these two options and it will generate a web page that handles viewing these images in a much more efficient manner (they tend to be very large images by default). For Deep Zoom photos, the web page will use Silverlight to allow for interactivity with the image. HD View is like Deep Zoom but also adds some extra affects – it can rewarp the panorama on the fly using a fish-eye lens, auto-exposure adjust for looking into those deep shadows of the panorama, and it will support wide-color-gamut monitors. HD View is still more experimental technology and will require a special plugin. You can get it here.

Add to Photo Gallery!

Now you can take this advanced ICE photo manipulation technology and integrate it into Windows Live Photo Gallery. Just download it and install it. You’ll then see a new menu item in the WLPG “Extras” menu:

To use ICE, simply select a group of images and then launch it using the new menu item.

(via Windows Live Photo & Video Blog)

Photosynths from SXSW

Sarah Perez — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 13:56:00 GMT

In case you haven’t heard, a ton of web geeks are currently attending the annual South by Southwest festival, a week-long music, film, and web conference that takes place in Austin, Texas. You’ve probably seen the blog posts, Twitter updates, and photo uploads from SXSW throughout the past week and then some. After a while, those not attending the event may get a little bored with all the SXSW-related activity. But Phil Wheat is doing something pretty cool with his SXSW photos which I hope more people will do, too. Phil has transformed his pictures into photosynths using the Microsoft Live Labs’ Photosynth technology. There are currently 3 sets of SXSW synths available online containing hundreds of his photos stitched together for zoomable 3D viewing. At the moment, though, 2 of the 3 sets are looking out a window. I’d love to see more synths of SXSW in action. What better way to virtually attend the festival than with the 360 degree experience Photosynth provides? C’mon, let’s see some more synths! You can heck out Phil’s current set of pics here .

An Easy Way to Alert Family & Friends About Your New Photos

Sarah Perez — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 13:47:00 GMT

One of the most challenging aspects of photo sharing for many people is figuring out how to inform their family and friends that there are new photos available online. This is one aspect of the Windows Live Photos service which I think nicely addresses that issue. After you’ve uploaded photos to Windows Live – either using the free desktop software from download.live.com or by visiting photos.live.com from your web browser, you can quickly share a URL that points to your new album with anyone.

When you’re viewing a photo album in Windows Live, there’s an option at the top to “Send a Link.” You may think that this will open up whatever email program you use or move you into your Windows Live Mail/Hotmail, but actually, it’s just a feature of the service.

When you click the link, you’ll be taken to a page where you can enter in the email addresses of those you want to share the pictures with. The form has a nice auto-complete feature which will automatically fill in their information if you have those folks saved in your contacts (at people.live.com or within your Windows Live Mail/Hotmail).

However, if you’re always sending photos to the same group of people – like those in your family for example, you should go ahead and create a list. Go to people.live.com and click on the “Category” drop-down. From there, create a new category and add people from your contacts to that list.

Now whenever you’re on the “Send a Link” page, you can just click the checkmark next to that list. Click “Send” when you’re finished and your family, friends, co-workers, or whoever it was you shared with will receive an email from Windows Live alerting them to your new photos. And, assuming you leave the bottom box checked, they won’t have to sign in with a Windows Live ID in order to view them – they can just click the link in their email.

Photosynth Comes to the iPhone

Sarah Perez — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 13:58:00 GMT

One of the best products so far to emerge from Microsoft’s Live Labs has got to be Photosynth, an amazing tool that lets you transform your photos into three-dimensional worlds you can then virtually explore. In the past, we’ve seen Photosynths integrated with Live Maps, turned into slideshows, geotagged, changed into Point Clouds, and even used to document historical events like President Obama’s inauguration. Now you can add one more to that list: Photosynth has come to the iPhone.

With the new iPhone application iSnyth (iTunes URL: http://www.itunes.com/app/isynth) just released today in the iTunes App Store, you can view photosynths with your iPhone or iPod Touch. Within the application, there are buttons for the most recent and most viewed synths as well as a funny category called “nice and synthy,” which apparently means they have tons of photos per synth. In the ones I saw, for example, most were “100% synthy.” There’s also a search option that lets you search for synths using keywords.

Clicking on a synth first gives you a brief description of the image including number of views, number of photos used, date, percentage “synthy,” and a thumbnail from the image. You can then press the “View Synth!” button to delve into the synth on your phone. As with the viewer application on your computer, you can explore the synth using the directional arrow keys, tap to zoom in and out, and even hit a button to see the point clouds.

Unfortunately, you can’t turn your iPhone images into snyths using the new viewer app – you still need to use your Mac or PC to do that. But you can show them off to others here when you’re finished.

iSynth was developed by Greg Pascale with permission from Microsoft. Greg was an intern on the Photosynth team during the summer of 2008. He’s currently a student at Brown University, class of 2009. However, iSynth isn’t a Microsoft product nor is it officially supported by Microsoft. Instead, Greg will provide his own support via GetSatisfaction.

Play with Photosynth Point Clouds

Sarah Perez — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 20:54:00 GMT

One of the lesser-known features in Photosynth, the software that stitches images together to deliver 3D experiences, is something known as the “point cloud mode.” By pressing “P” you can switch over into an alternative viewing mode which allows you to see the objects in the photos as a composition of points, like a black-and-white impressionist painting. You can even view objects from angles that you don’t have photos of! It sort of reminds me of something I would see on some TV crime-fighting show, where I would just roll my eyes and say “yeah right, like that exists.” Except that it’s not fake – it’s real. And it’s pretty awesome.

Before, the point cloud viewing mode was only available in the Windows client. But with a recent update, the Photosynth point clouds are now available from within Silverlight, too. This is great news for Linux and Mac users as they both use the Silverlight Viewer.

The update also included a lot of improvements like better object rotation and several minor bug fixes.

Now go try it.

Seadragon + GigaPan

Sarah Perez — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 14:22:00 GMT

You probably heard about GigaPan recently – maybe for the first time, if you weren’t already a photo enthusiast – thanks to this widely shared and discussed image from the Obama inauguration. The GigaPan technology creates high-res gigapixel panoramic images which can then be zoomed in and out on and explored. Recently, some folks have begun doing even more interesting things with the GigaPan technology – they’ve been combining it with Microsoft Seadragon.

Take, for example, Jason of Odyssey Expeditions, who created this Seadragon Ajax viewer for GigaPan images. It’s still being worked on, but it’s pretty cool. There’s also Daniel Gasienica’s pipeline for loading up GigaPan images into the new Seadragon Mobile iPhone app. Just enter http://gigapan-mobile.appspot.com/feed/ as an RSS feed in the Seadragon Mobile app to see his GigaPan images – one being David Bergman’s Obama inauguration photo, of course.

(via dragonosticism)

Sync Photos Between Two Computers with Photo Gallery and Sync

Sarah Perez — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 18:24:00 GMT

If you’re already using Windows Live Mesh to keep your files and photos between PCs in sync, then you don’t really need to worry with using Windows Live Sync (formerly called FolderShare). However, if you never installed the beta Mesh software and you’re just looking for a simple solution to keep your photos synced between PCs, the new Windows Live Sync Photo Gallery integration may be the better choice for you.

After installing Windows Live Photo Gallery (a part of the new Windows Live Essentials suite) on two computers, you can then set them up to sync with each other. To do so, click Setup gallery sync…from the File Menu in Photo Gallery and follow the instructions provided. (You’ll need to be signed in with your Windows Live ID first).

In addition to syncing the photos themselves, the software also syncs your history of edits.

Sync currently will work with up to 20 synchronized folders containing up to 20,000 files each.

PhotoJoy Lets You Do More with Your Photos

Sarah Perez — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 17:15:00 GMT

If you have a large collection of photos and yet never seem to do anything much with them beyond uploading them to an online photo archive like Windows Live Photos or Flickr, you’re definitely going to want to check out PhotoJoy. With this service, you can turn your photos into 3D screensavers, wallpaper collages, and even something they call “PhotoToys,” which are basically desktop widgets that display your photos in new and fun ways.

Using the PhotoJoy application, you can import photos from your computer, your Flickr account, or from PhotoJoy’s own online gallery of professional images. You can then transform them into screensavers, collages, or widgets. These widgets, or PhotoToys, can display your photos as cubes, magazines, mobiles, shuffles, and more.

If you choose the option to import your photos from Flickr, you’ll also want to enable the web streaming feature, too, as this will automatically update your PhotoJoy creations with new images as they become available online.

The PhotoJoy application is available as a free download and is spyware and adware free.

Photosynths at Yesterday’s Inauguration

Sarah Perez — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 17:14:00 GMT

Yesterday, when Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States, people attending the ceremony were taking thousands of photos. In a partnership with CNN, photos from the event’s attendees were combined with those from CNN’s professional photographers, then uploaded and shared as Photosynths – the 360 images that let you virtually explore a scene or locale from all angles, using only your computer.

By visiting “The Moment” web site at CNN, you can see the end results of these efforts. Here, one giant Photosynth’ed image is displayed on the screen. You can pan and zoom and rotate the images as you wish…or, if you do nothing, the CNN page refreshes the photos for you. Given the amount of people in the photos, you can zoom in and out forever, focusing on different sections of the image. (For example, check out the men in black on the roof of the capital!)

But while “The Moment” received special attention thanks to CNN, there are tons of other inauguration-related synths to explore. Just go to http://photosynth.net/inauguration.aspx and click on any of the red pushpins to see the photos taken in various areas of Washington D.C., including images from the parade, at area monuments, or elsewhere in the crowd.

PhotoSuru, a Cool, Photo-Viewing WPF App

Sarah Perez — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 21:39:00 GMT

Adam Kinney just blogged about a new app called PhotoSuru, a WPF sample application that lets you browse and share your photos. The app takes advantage of WPF features like Pixel Shaders, Adaptive Layout and Custom Themes. It’s designed to be more of a starter kit for developers who want to learn about WPF or build on top of what the app has to offer, but even on its own, it’s pretty cool.

PhotoSuru lets you display your photo albums as a filmstrip at the top of the screen with the larger photos displayed underneath. There are different views available – you can overlay descriptions or click more to see the photo and a longer rich text description beside the photo. You can also import subscriptions from a folder on your hard drive. You can even “drive” the app with a remote control!

For a video demonstration, check out this post on Channel 9. Or to visit the app itself, visit the PhotoSuru homepage.

Polaroid Lives on in Windows Live Writer

Sarah Perez — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 12:17:00 GMT

A lot of people were sad to hear that Polaroid planned to stop manufacturing their instant film this year. Now, as we’re only months away from the final retail stocks being completely sold out, we have to accept that we’ve finally reached the end of an era in photography. For folks like myself and others born before 1980 (and even some born since), Polaroid pictures were a big part of the family photo opps. They covered my corkboard bulletin boards in the 80’s and 90’s and even made their way into the family photo album on many occasions. But since the debut of digital camera, sales of Polaroid’s instant film slowed down to the point that it no longer made financial sense for the company to continue to manufacture the film. Well, at least the Polaroid can live on in a way, thanks to Windows Live Writer. When you insert a photo into Live Writer, you can choose “Instant Photo” from the border options available. That gives the photo the appearance of a Polaroid picture. No, you can’t shake it…but it’s all we’ve got left. Long live our blogged Polaroids!

Mooncake Brings DeepZoom to Flickr and SmugMug

Sarah Perez — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 14:53:00 GMT

How cool is this? The guys over at LiveSide uncovered Felix Wang’s not-so-secret project called Mooncake, which brings DeepZoom capabilities to the photo-sharing sites Flickr and SmugMug. Similar to Microsoft Live Labs’ own PhotoZoom, Mooncake can generate a deep zoomable photo album of your favorite pictures. However, where PhotoZoom pulls in images via an RSS feed, Mooncake tries to make that process even easier – you only need enter your Flickr or SmugMug account info to make your own DeepZoom album which can then be easily embedded on any web site or blog.

To use Mooncake, you must first sign up for the service at http://beta.redmooncake.net.

To create an album, you begin by clicking on create new collection:

Next you choose “add photos.” Here you can select from either Flickr or SmugMug – and uploading from your PC is a feature listed as coming soon:

Once you enter in your username for your preferred photo-sharing service, you can then choose the album drop-down box to show just the photos from a particular online album:

You can select individual photos or click a link to easily select them all. Once you have all the photos selected, click the “add photos” button at the bottom. The service will build a deep-zoomable album for you which you can then preview and share.

The album is embeddable as either a standard viewer (400x400) or mini-viewer (200x200) or you can customize the code to your liking using the viewer size options box at the bottom of the page.

You can then copy and paste the code and add the viewer to any web site on the net as either an object, iframe, or javascript embed.

Straighten Up Your Photos With Live Photo Gallery

Sarah Perez — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 02:52:00 GMT

If you’ve ever taken a snapshot in a hurry, then you know that those pictures can occasionally end up blurry, uncentered, and crooked. A good camera can help you take clearer, crisper action shots and a little cropping action can fixed the un-entered shots, but what about those photos that end up crooked? Even cropping a slightly sideways pic won’t fix that problem. However, with the new beta version of Windows Live Photo Gallery, there is a solution for crooked photos.

The new Live Photo Gallery actually has a built-in “Straighten Photo” feature. To use this feature, select your photo and click on the “Fix” button in the top toolbar. Then, just click the “Straighten Photo” option. Your picture will automatically straighten itself out! And if you need to fine-tune the adjustment, you can optionally use the slider to adjust the angle. Just move the slider to the right to rotate the picture clockwise and move it to the left for counter-clockwise. The grid that appears can help you align your photo perfectly.

Here’s an example of both the before and after (see below).

BEFORE:

AFTER:

(Thanks to Arwa Tyebkhan for this tip…and example photos!)

AutoCollage: A New Tool From Microsoft Research

Sarah Perez — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 14:12:00 GMT

AutoCollage is a new photo mashup tool from Microsoft Research Cambridge which allows you to automatically create collages from a collection of your photos. The software cuts out interesting parts of the photos in your collection and pieces them together following natural features as boundaries between images. The photos are then blended together using sophisticated computer vision technology as well as other software which does face detection, object recognition, image blending, and other graphic techniques. The end result is a collage created from your very own photos.

Although the software is doing pretty complex stuff on the back end, the front end is surprisingly easy to use. You just point it to a folder containing your photos and click a button - that's it! AutoCollage will then goes to work. When the collage is complete - a process that only takes a few seconds - your resulting image can be printed, emailed, or set as your desktop wallpaper.

For great results, it's suggested that you use 7-30 photos for the best performance, but the software defaults to 12. AutoCollage works on both Vista and XP SP2+ and is available as a free download from here.

How To Use Photosynth In 4 Easy Steps

Sarah Perez — 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.

Animoto: An Automated Video Creation Tool

Sarah Perez — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 14:20:00 GMT

Have you seen this? A web app called Animoto is announcing “the end of slideshows” thanks to their automatic video creation tool. You don’t have to create anything yourself – just point it to your media on the web (or upload from your PC) and Animoto’s Cinematic A.I. technology will create a completely customized video for you including a background track!

After you sign up for Animoto and start creating your first video, you’re promoted to either upload your photos from your computer or direct the app to use images you have stored on an online photo service like flickr, smugmug, Picasa, photobucket, or even Facebook! If you have your photos organized into albums, you can configure Animoto to retrieve the images just from one particular album.

You have to wait for a moment while the application retrieves your images. Ideally, for their 30-second video, you should have around 15 images – more than that, and some could be left off. If you want to make a longer video it’s only $3 – regardless of how many images are used.

For the music selection, you can upload a track from your PC or select one from their online collection, which lets you browse by genre (top 40, indie rock, hip hop, etc.) to find something appropriate. Note: though “Top 40” is a category, I’m either officially old or these are unsigned artists.

Finally, you’ll have your end product – a customized video created with their unique technology. Their app analyzes and combines the images and takes into account every detail about a song – genre, structure, energy, rhythm, instrumentation, and vocals. Every video created will have a distinct set of motion. The video can then be emailed to friends, posted to your social network profile, downloaded to your computer, uploaded to YouTube, embedded on your blog, and more.

Animoto isn’t a new service – they’ve been in the works since 2005 and started receiving a lot of blog coverage last year. However, I personally had not tried the site for myself until today, and now that I have, I have to say I’m highly impressed. The app was fast, slick, and dead-simple to use, and the end product looks great. Looks like I’ll be pimping my MySpace page this weekend!

Browsing Photos With Pictomio

Sarah Perez — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 07:34:00 GMT

Pictomio is a new, downloadable app for Windows that makes browsing through your photos a really cool experience. The app has a slick, modern interface and lets you flip through your photos in 3D. Because of the 3D rendering, your graphics card will need to have some juice to take advantage of this software, but the end result is worth it. Pictomio very much reminds me of what the PicLens browser add-on offers, and makes me wonder if 3D browsing is the next big thing we're going to be seeing both on the web and in our software programs.

You can also use the program to view, organize, browse, and edit your photos’ metadata, but it stops short of being a full-on image editing program. Still, this program is a lot of fun and it’s definitely being added to my list of alternatives to Windows Explorer.

Thanks FreewareGenius

Virtual Earth Team Launches "GoVE"

Sarah Perez — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 18:13:00 GMT

The Virtual Earth team has just launched a new program called GoVE which lets state and local governments, municipalities, and aerial photographers share their own imagery with Microsoft and get it published on Virtual Earth. After checking out maps.live.com to verify that the imagery they have it news and has a higher resolution of what's currently being offered online, the organizations can then contact the team by sending an email to NitroDesk is a program that helps photographers easily manage, upload, transfer, and sync their photos and/or videos from their PC to several online media sharing websites including PlanetEye, SmugMug, Zenfolio, Picasa Web Albums, Flickr, Facebook, ShutterPoint, and Windows Live Spaces for photos and Vimeo and YouTube for video. Nitrodesk also support workflow tools like Adobe LightRoom, Google Picasa2, and Microsoft Expression Media 2. With this latest release of Media Edition, users can now drag and drop photos, albums, or video from one site to another or upload to multiple sites simultaneously. For anyone who works with publishing their media to several different sites, NitroDesk Media Edition may just be worth the one-time fee of $29.99 to save you the hassle. To use this software, you’ll need Windows XP or Windows Vista, and Microsoft .Net Framework 3.0. You can watch a video about Nitrodesk here.