Sea Dragon and PhotoSynth

During a recent visit to Microsoft HQ in Redmond I was treated to updates on several current and planned technologies (thanks Microsoft!).  I try to get back there yearly and learn every time I do.  I have a few posts to do because of this trip, but the info I’m reporting on is all available off of Microsoft or other websites, I just add some context.

This first post is on Sea Dragon and Photosynth.
SeaDragon
is a capability that promises to change the way people use screens, from wall sized displays to mobile devices.  Visual information can be smoothly browsed regardless of the size of the dataset or the bandwidth of the network.   For more info see: http://labs.live.com/Seadragon.aspx

A YouTube demo of Seadragon is at:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-DqZ8jAmv0
I would highly recommend watching that video. It really makes this technology easy to understand.

At the second half of this YouTube video is a demo of the next technology: “Photosynth.”

Photosynth was called “the coolest technology I have seen in recent memory” by Jeff Jonas.   Its power comes from its ability to find context in images and link that context to other images and other
metadata so the context is accumulated.  Photo collections can be turned into entry points to explore the entire world.  You can explore gigabytes of information in seconds.  This helps humans make sense of
what they are looking at.  For an appreciation of what Photosynth might do for our mission area, see the same YouTube video I mentioned above at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-DqZ8jAmv0

As you watch this video, imagine if all the images any source anywhere had taken were linked together in the way you will see images of the Notre Dame Cathedral.

More information and a tech preview is online at:  http://labs.live.com/photosynth/