Re: Hive Mind

Librarian Powers Activate!

A higher quality version of the demo is available at the TED conference site here.

More info is also up at the Microsoft Live Labs page for the technology, called Photosynth.  There is a demo there as well but my crappy work computer can’t run it (lack of even a cheap graphics card).  Be warned it requires use of IE 6/7, which already negates its viability assuming they don’t shoot for browser independence for the official release.  It might also be Windows specific, but if a Mac or Linux user (running Wine or some other means of getting IE to work….I guess) knows different let me know.

There is some other cool stuff on there as well including the team blog and links to specialized collections, including a link to a project with the BBC called “Your Britain in Pictures”, that might be worth playing around with.

The wikipedia entry provides a bit of trivia, some similar products, and other interesting tidbits.  In particular the science behind the whole deal: photogrammetry.  The photgrammetry article has a solid list of external links if you’re interested in finding out more.  Is it me or does photogrammetry have a delightfully 19th century science sound to it?

Last National Geographic has a video demo of the Stonehenge constructed using Photosynth.

Enjoy.

Hive Mind

I’d say this technology is at least worth checking out.  About 2/3 of the way into the video, the guy shows off a composite model of the Notre Dame cathedral.  The model was designed using pictures from Flickr.  That’s awesome enough to border on the absurd.  There’s some other cool things in the presentation but, as one of the many people who is computer literate but has no in-depth knowledge of computers, I have no concept of what kind of power these processes entail.  Having gigabytes of pictures all up at once so that you can navigate and zoom smoothly doesn’t seem like the kind of thing my Dell laptop can do.