Slashdot Mirror

The reality is that it was only a matter of time before someone came up with something like this, with examples like Microsoft Photosynth, but this is an unbelievable implementation.

I'm not 100% sure, but I can definitely see the potential for Google to snatch this up really fast and incorporate it into Picasa or even google image search or something. The fact that something like this allows anyone (not just artists) to come up with novel images with minimal effort is fantastic. I do wonder how canned the images were though. IE: did they GIS for an image first, then use the image as a basis to draw the stick figure, knowing that their algorithm would pick the image they selected in the first place? I would like to see a live demo with an unplanned audience member doing the drawing. Then I'll really be impressed.

That is just changed to down = outwards, right = counter-clockwise (starting from the bottom center). But they didn't show the 'staircase' and their colouring scheme is completely useless providing no additional information. So it is shittier than the standard periodic table and provides no new information. I think one thing we COULD do is use an ap like Seadragon to include much more information in the table. Obviously only doable with computers of course.

WebGL is attempting to build an actual standard (unlike Flash) which people might really use (unlike VRML) to put accelerated (unlike Flash) 2d and 3d graphics on the web.

Why? I'd imagine (other than trying to beat Microsoft to the punch with WebX or whatever they decide to put forth) that it's a move toward cloud applications. Adobe's been talking for years about putting Premiere, Flash and Photoshop into web applications. Google beat Microsoft to the punch with Google Docs. A decent accelerated 3d surface in the mainstream browsers would bring applications like Maya, 3DStudio Max, Mudbox, Blender, etc into the game.

3d authoring would be accessible to everybody, not just well-paid techy people and people who are ok with piracy. Ignoring games entirely (and I hate to do that) for the moment, we'll talk about some other stuff.

3d display technology is coming to consumers whether the consumers like it or not, and by and large, the consumers do like it. When you've got a 3d display to work with, communicating certain concepts to consumers becomes fairly easy. You can bet some automotive manufacturer will put up 3d models of their cars to play with (a couple of them did with VRML). How about fashion? Being able to see what the weave looks like in some designer clothing might be a selling point. Premium real estate with those horrible 3d walkthroughs would improve incrementally. Especially if they combined it with that Microsoft Labs Photosynth project.

3d photography will no doubt become a larger subset of the hobbyist market once 3d displays become reasonably common. How about 3d Street View on Google Maps? How about a web version of Google Earth?

With processor power increasing, JavaScript engines becoming more efficient and vaguely standardized with ECMAScript, 3d on the browser will be inconvenient only for a little while, then commonplace, then expected.

Take a look at Microsoft Photosynth. I don't know if it would be able to handle long, multiple streets, but if you take enough overlapping photos, it might work well for you.

100's of sets of tourist photos randomly scattered across the internet, being added and removed and reorganized by their takers at their whim is not remetely the same thing as a single permanent indexed geo-tagged database filled with photos that were carefully and systematically taken and stitched together.

Are you sure? I was under the impression that this was the point of Microsoft Photosynth.

And considering how effective that is at pulling in pictures you didn't expect it would, I wouldn't be overly surprised if it was able to move to the inside of your house as well.

100's of sets of tourist photos randomly scattered across the internet, being added and removed and reorganized by their takers at their whim is not remetely the same thing as a single permanent indexed geo-tagged database filled with photos that were carefully and systematically taken and stitched together.

A random collection of photographs of a public space, tagged with vague location info can easily be converted into a 3D model you can virtually walk around. Have you seen Photosynth's Notre Dame Demo?

Typical of MS offerings, it took a while to chase the links down to find out what the hell Sandbox actually is/does. See http://websandbox.livelabs.com/

Seems to be similar to Caja, allowing you to include third-party scripts or content in your pages without worrying that they will muck things up or steal your cookies.

Has anyone (shudder) actually used it for anything? I'm afraid if they want my attention I need to see some simple, obvious examples.

http://livelabs.com/web-sandbox/

None of these scenarios represent the future for Microsoft. A much well thought out future was done by the now defunct Business 2.0 on Google http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2006/01/01/8368125/index.htm

1. Desktop Operating Systems: Granted, Microsoft's cash cow of Desktop operating systems better evolve. I don't agree with the statement on Office 12 which is much better than previous versions. The same can't be said of Windows Vista or Windows 7. They better start working on IE 9 which should be open source and standards compatible for starters. The future of desktop OS is the browser and technologies like gears, silverlight and AIR.

2. Server OS: Microsoft will probably retain the 50-50 ratio on the server side and Server 2008 is excellent with AD. However, it may have to think long and hard about Hyper-V because virtualization is going to be the future on the server OS side.

2. Gaming: With the XBOX division, they will be making their $$ of Xbox live and not by selling the console. Xbox live is very stable and provides an excellent online gaming experience. Sony's victory of Blue Ray won't be longer because for movies and all, its going to turn to a streaming model. So MS better start putting TB drives in there or make them generic for the users to swap them out.

3. Application Dev: Eclipse is a good alterative but MS Visual Studio is one of the best IDE's out there. It is not going to die anytime soon.

4. R&D: Microsoft's labs may not match Google currently but they are coming out with some cool stuff. Photosynth comes to mind. With their "surface" technology evolving it will be interesting.http://livelabs.com/projects/

Microsoft absolutely needs fast cross-platform Javascript for some of the stuff they are developing.