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Inside Microsoft's New Digital Photo Project
robyn217 writes "While Microsoft Research plays 'Big Brother' to a young hiker's trip across North America, it breaks new ground in digital photography by combining metadata, like location via GPS, with the image. Its online presence looks impressive as it displays digital photo albums on a map of the world, but it's slow and unwieldy for the most part and may not be better than a standard travelogue site. This week, I took a closer look at the project currently named the World-Wide Media eXchange (WWMX)."
Just point at the picture you'd like to go to, and Microsoft will tell you exactly where it is.
They are the freaking sponsor! You make it sound like some grand conspiracy.
I'm glad microsoft is getting into this kind of thing. National Geographic has been doing a dismal job over the past few months, and there really are not enough players in the game. It's funny, in my experience most geeks really do like the great outdoors, so it seems a proper marriage to me!
Mod +5 Drunk
They have been using embeded data in TIFFs for years in nav. programs that overlayed a map image with altitude and lat/long.
...if a Linux-based solution was doing exactly the same thing terminology like 'big brother' would be nowhere to be found. I find your write-up to be double plus biased.
Once there is a large enough dataset of pictures (and that really is the key to making more then a travelog), I like the idea of combining something like this with a satalite imaging service so you can feel like you are really zooming in.
To me it has the potential to help provide context to the places that you here about on the news or that students are assigned to research. Plus, it's just plain neat!
I currently run a website, TrailRegistry that does exactly this. Actually it does a whole lot more. The general tilt of my site is hiking related, so the pictures are generally of views, shelters, mountains, etc... What I think is more important is sharing of trip data collected by GPS. So for instance, if you hiked an unmarked trail in your area, you could upload the GPS track log to TrailRegistry, and TrailRegistry will create a Topo map (On the fly) for other users to use.
Please check it out, You might find it usefull. Also,I allways love feedback on what I could do better..
Check out TrailRegistry.com, my hiking site, Maps, altitude pr
Hardly.... They sponsored this guy and I think it's great that they are doing so. This is a wonderful project but since it's sponsored by Microsoft it's automatically evil?
Great, lets link to a website that has nothing but photos and thumbnails! Ooh wait, better yet! Let's find one that organizes them dynamically with non-trivial algorithms!!
Are we going for a new slashdotting record or something?
~D
This sig has been enciphered with a one-time pad. It could say almost anything.
While trying to view the microsoft link above I got the following error message:
Still amazingly honest for Microsoft!/p
Of course they couldn't call it WWME - World-Wide Media Exchange
... but I just can't resist plugging hostip.info which attempts to geolocate IP addresses to a latitude / longitude map (and give a nice zoom-in if you're located or (if you're unknown) once you have put in your details...
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
because it's written in .NET (probably C#). Oh yeah, and at Slashdot, we don't like either .NET or Microsoft.
Even when they do "impressive" stuff.
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
Is it that easy to /. a M$ .NET server?
I have a lot of good ideas for the software, and have already written out a lot of db schema and logic, but I am having a hard time finding high resolution maps which I may use legally, and this was discouraging. Most of the big satellite image companies want an arm and a leg for the right to display their images on your site. Anyone know of a place where I can get at least semi-high resolution satellite maps, like 5m or better, that I'll have the rights to display on my website?
I assume that I would release the software under the GPL without any maps included, but its no fun writing software which nobody can really use unless they purchase satellite imagery!
"'Yrch!' said Legolas, falling into his own tongue."
A few years ago an old Jeep buddy of mine mentioned an idea for a web site like this - people could drive around Utah, take pictures, and record the GPS coordinates of where the picture was taken so that others could find the same place for camping/etc.
This just seems to do something of what iPhoto does - attaches some meta-data (in this case, GPS coordinates, time&date, etc) to the file.
I'd say this could be pretty cool, though of course I'd like to see an open standard used and the ability to turn it off. I don't think I mind all cell phones by 2005 having GPS (the ability to save lives could be huge for 9-1-1 services), but I want the capacity to shut the damn thing off so Psycho Boy Jones can't jump me because he didn't like my recipe for spicy sweet mashed potatos.
Side note for those worried about privacy: there was a story I was reading about a service for cell phones in Japan. Suppose your spouse calls and wants a picture of where you are, and instead of working late at the office (like you said you were), you were out at the bar with your friends. This service will forward a picture of your office to them instead of your current location.
With GPS being mandatory in cell phones by 2005 (at least according to the article), you wonder how other people will tap into it? Is this a 9-1-1 services only thing, or is this "add to my GPS" list so people in other phones have your coordinates at all time? (Something that might be a new level of parental control when your teenager goes out with friends for the night....)
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
for capturing someone's cross country adventure and turning it into a slow loading web page adventure.
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
I wonder how can we get MS to pay for other fantasy trips, I would love to get a boat and live on the sea and go diving every day. I would let them take all the pics they want, hell I would even let them test out the new MS scuba computer with me(as long as I get analog backups)
So is the one mentioned above running .JSP - but no comment about that?
Is it just me, or did we just slashdot Microsoft?
So much for stable serving abilities.
Maybe someday this could be put to use on something like mapquest. Do a search, pop up with a picture of your location, this sure as hell beats any map, when the user can SEE where they are going.
I cant remember how many times i have been stuck guessing which building i have to walk into.
Over the years I've seen many pictures of places I'd like to visit (as I'm sure the rest of you have as well). IMHO, including GPS and other location metadata in a picture is a great idea! Now we'll know exactly where that beautiful water fall we want to visit is rather than just knowing that it's somewhere in Ecuador.
The downside of this is that every tourist with a GPS can find places that are virtually unspoiled by man and end up spoiling them.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
information on how it's already being done.
Yet the site isn't actually working. Maybe it does suck, maybe it's nothing new, but since it's not actually accessible at the moment, isn't it kind of hard to tell?
It's a Microsoft Research site and obviously they weren't expecting it to be get much traffic. If you doubt Microsoft can set up a site that can handle high volume, everybody click this now:
Microsoft.com
It's not even .net you tard, its just asp...
.aspx
.net pages use the file extension
[ Don't reply to this ]
Actually, that isn't the case for Microsoft Research at all. While the company itself may not use all of the contributions of MS Research, generally the group does some pretty innovative things. Most of the time. Unfortunately, very rarely does their work make it into their products, but when it does (like ClearType), it's usually pretty damn good.
There is at least one professional camera which can embed GPS coordinates in the image data itself, in the form of an additional line in the EXIF tag. It has limitations when you're indoors, I would imagine, but great for most hiking or driving conditions.
This would be immensely popular for real estate agents who need to correlate pictures to addresses all the time.
[
Probably slow because it's microsoft funding a non-profit initiative (looky, its an .org site), and its probably a matter of more server power needed.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I wouldn't mind having a photo directory of all the exits on the major interstates. I am more visual than map oriented, and this would be fantastically helpful. I miss exits all the time. If I knew what I was looking for, I don't think I would miss them.
If they are looking for a commercial application, thats something they could consider.
then what was the tag at the bottom : " .NET Framework Version:1.1.4322.573; ASP.NET Version:1.1.4322.573 " all about ? I've never used asp | .net so I really don't know
Version Information: Microsoft
this sig is deprecated
Bill Gates has a private project (Corbis, not affiliated with MS) growing to amass a large collection of photographs. It already does a good business of finding and licensing photos for almost any use. They could be trying to get more for the collection, or to join up in an IP pipeline to benefit both companies.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
I can't wait until GPS technology is small enough and cheap enough to put inside the camera. It'd be great for looking at holiday photos...
"Where the hell was that?"
"Lemme check the map... Oh, that was St Jude's Cathedral."
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
And you could build in error-correcting routines so that once you have multiple image sources for a particular location, it'll learn to throw away non-static elements such as vehicles and people. Imagine being able to do a fully-rendered fly-through of New York City. Wouldn't that be awesome?
The CB App. What's your 20?
t breaks new ground in digital photography by combining metadata, like location via GPS, with the image
Oh, that's right. I forgot Microsoft invented metadata. Giggle.
(Am I the only one who heard about this being done by other companies years ago? I distinctly remember finding stuff about something similiar when looking for a Palm GPS module.)
The site loaded just fine 2 minutes ago. Just as quickly as Slashdot.
And of course no website running on say, Apache, has ever been slashdotted.
Sheesh.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
What makes you think that sponsoring == hosting? What was the last time you saw microsoft.com "slashdotted"? And the other site seems to be running JSP. No witty report about it? I'll leave it to you to see what your DNS server tells you about wwmx.org - I'll be impressed then.
We won't be able to publish our own photos online because it will infringe on some patent.
Server Error in '/' Application.
W orkerRequest wr) +147
.NET Framework Version:1.1.4322.573; ASP.NET
***** Server Too Busy *****
Description:An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.
Exception Details:System.Web.HttpException: Server Too Busy
Source Error:
An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below.
Stack Trace:
[HttpException (0x80004005): Server Too Busy] System.Web.HttpRuntime.RejectRequestInternal(Http
Version Information: Microsoft
Version:1.1.4322.573
Screw M$. If you have a GPS and a digital camera, you can make your own site using GPS Photo Link.gpsphotolink I've used it on numerous ocassions and it works like a charm. It uses the time stamp on your digital photos to relate to the nearest waypoint or position in your GPS tracklog to generate GIS data for your photo points. It then creates HTML that links your photos to map graphics of your location.
Check out the sample sites at SAMPLES
Nikon D1 adds GPS information to the EXIF header. See a review. "RS232C port for connection to GPS units, GPS location is recorded in image header"
http://www.geosnapper.com/index.php
omgod we're slashdotting microsoft. where mydoom failed we rule.
$ host wwmx.org
wwmx.org has address 131.107.151.179
$ whois 131.107.151.179
[Querying whois.arin.net]
[whois.arin.net]
OrgName:  ; Microsoft Corp
OrgID: MSFT
Address: One Microsoft Way
City: Redmond
StateProv: WA
PostalCode: 98052
Country: US
NetRange: 131.107.0.0 - 131.107.255.255
CIDR: 131.107.0.0/16
NetName: MICROSOFT
NetHandle: NET-131-107-0-0-1
Parent: NET-131-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Assignment
NameServer: DNS1.CP.MSFT.NET
NameServer: DNS2.CP.MSFT.NET
NameServer: DNS1.TK.MSFT.NET
NameServer: DNS1.DC.MSFT.NET
NameServer: DNS1.SJ.MSFT.NET
Comment:
RegDate: 1988-11-11
Updated: 2002-12-05
TechHandle: ZM39-ARIN
TechName: Microsoft
TechPhone: +1-425-936-4200
TechEmail: noc@microsoft.com
OrgAbuseHandle: HOTMA-ARIN
OrgAbuseName: Hotmail Abuse
OrgAbusePhone: +1-425-882-8080
OrgAbuseEmail: abuse@hotmail.com
OrgAbuseHandle: MSNAB-ARIN
OrgAbuseName: MSN ABUSE
OrgAbusePhone: +1-425-882-8080
OrgAbuseEmail: abuse@msn.com
OrgAbuseHandle: ABUSE231-ARIN
OrgAbuseName: Abuse
OrgAbusePhone: +1-425-882-8080
OrgAbuseEmail: abuse@microsoft.com
OrgNOCHandle: ZM23-ARIN
OrgNOCName: Microsoft Corporation
OrgNOCPhone: +1-425-882-8080
OrgNOCEmail: noc@microsoft.com
OrgTechHandle: MSFTP-ARIN
OrgTechName: MSFT-POC
OrgTechPhone: +1-425-882-8080
OrgTechEmail: iprrms@microsoft.com
# ARIN WHOIS database, last updated 2004-02-05 19:15
# Enter ? for additional hints on searching ARIN's WHOIS database.
if it wasn't before, it sure as heck is now!! yah slashdot!
What makes you think that sponsoring == hosting?
This? Specifically, the part where it indicates the Netblock Owner is Microsoft.
And the other site seems to be running JSP.
Which site is that? The only other links I saw went to sites that were either static HTML or ASP.
---------------------------------------------
SERENITY NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I think it was more in reference to the ever-watchful nature of the television show. Hence the quotes.
Putting the GPS inside the camera may be neither necessary nor desirable right now. You are probably better off getting a Bluetooth GPS and putting Bluetooth into the camera. That way, you can keep the GPS in your backpack, give it its own big battery, and you can share it with your PDA and mapping software as well. Of course, eventually, GPS becomes small enough that it really doesn't matter.
Note that some cameras already have "built-in GPS", or rather, they have a PCMCIA slot plus the software to drive a GPS that you put into it.
For a long time I've thought it would be cool to equip digital cameras with GPS (including facing information) and Packet Radio transmitters. Every photo could be invisibly stamped (via metadata) with the time and location of the shot and users could choose whether or not to "upload" the photo to a central server via the radio/cell/communications service.
Yes, a lot of shots would be useless but the central server could build up a massive "montage" to document what the world looks like at ground-level. I think this would also be very useful for providing data to create virtual tours of places.
Of course, I'm also harbouring the hope that the data could be used to create a truly detailed virtual world that I'll be able to live in once this meat-body packs up and I go completely digital....
They're too busy reporting that Microsoft is "violating human rights in China" because bad people use Windows. Disregard Red Flag Linux for now.
I have no love for Redmond's imprint on the computer business since about 1984 either.
But with so much money and so many intelligent employees, it's nice that somebody plays around with new technologies and publishes them for the world to see.
And if recent history of executives leaving MS is any guide, you could well see new technologies and ideas blossoming outside the confines of the Borg.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
And does it also indicate that the IP is hosted out of the same boxes that serve microsoft.com and their other high-traffic domains?
For all practical purposes this might be a crappy little PIII under a desk at MS Research.
Or to put it another way, when the last time you noticed microsoft.com was down due to a front-page link posted here, which happens every other day?
Wow, thanks.
You were just saying that they weren't the ones hosting it.
What makes you think that sponsoring == hosting?
Sub-pixel rendering was (probably) first implemented by Apple in the 70s. Which didn't keep M$ from trying to patent it 20 years later...
keep in mind that Microsoft doesn't have a stellar track record for information privacy.
Hence the big brother comment remark.
Not even Microsoft can make .NET scalable enough to sustain a good ol /.'ing.
It's only scalable if you plan it that way. The site seems to be working fine now (did you click on the correct link?) and if you had visited it you'd see:
It's an experimental research project run by the Interactive Visual Media Group at Microsoft Research
You expect a research project to be primed for loads of traffic? Of course, we all know that no Apache server has ever been slashdotted...oh wait, this just in from fedoranews.org
NOTICE 2004-02-05 11:00 AM
Sorry, we've been slashdotted. The KDE 3.2 articles will ben turn off for next few days.
From netcraft:
The site fedoranews.org is running Apache/1.3.27 (Unix) (Red-Hat/Linux) mod_ssl/2.8.12 OpenSSL/0.9.6b DAV/1.0.3 PHP/4.1.2 mod_perl/1.26 on Linux.
Hopefully fedoranews.org "will ben" turn on the articles soon. In the meantime, wwmx.org remains available for browsing.
Attaching GIS data to photos is nothing new.
It seems a good idea. But it would be really interesting if you could extend it to film and video production. One topic that interests me is the concept of automatically identifying the location of individual frames or scenes in adverts and movies. Some locations are fairly easy (downtown LA, Eiffel Tower, Tower of London), but sometimes things are a bit harder eg. looking for a streetname, telephone number on a vehicle).
Many of the old series, have helicopter fly overs in downtown cores. I always wonder how the view differs from now to back then, if a film camera were to follow the exact same path (eg. In the title sequence of ChiPs, are those large squares of green space still there in downtown LA?).
If a camera could store the pan, tilt, zoom and rotation along with the GPS coordinates, this could be possible.
I was just at a microsoft presentation at my university this week, and the guy was cool enough to demo the lastest build of longhorn. one of the things he showed off was the photo viewer/editor that had facial recognition. it could scan a picture, find peoples faces, let you click and name them, then tell the app to find all other pictures with that person in them. i have been a "mac zealot" for years, and even i must say that it was pretty cool. the guy made a good point that "shouldnt we all be expecting computers to be able to do this kinda stuff by now anyways?" and it's true.
The "Insert Quote Here" line is almost as predictable as inserting an actual quote.
Doesn't the EXIF specification already allow for information such as GPS location to be saved in the tag?
http://www.exif.org/
There also appears to be a propposal for LocationIFD, to further enhance/add to this functionality.
Not All Who Wander Are Lost
As you say, apples and oranges. Apache serves HTML pages and images, and nothing more, while ASP.NET serves all sorts of dynamic content.
Of course, you can use Apache to serve dynamic content with mod_perl, etc, but I've lost count of the number of times I've seen sites like that go down, and not because of bandwidth (k5, anyone?). Conversely, I've not seen a static IIS site go down, other than for lack of bandwidth.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
I doubt this will do that at all, people who go out into the wilderness to see those kinds of places are the kind of people who apreciate its beauty.
Knowing the EXACT location of some beautiful waterfall wont change who goes looking for it.
it will just change the methods used to find it.
kyle
"If God created us in his own image we have more than reciprocated." - Voltaire
I wonder how long till this is patented: Patent for associating geographic data with images.
Boy, wouldnt that blow. All of a sudden this interesting field being monopolized by microsoft. While it is an interesting concept, i cant see myself using it if it was a patented process... unless i hacked together a solution myself. It wouldnt be that hard with the textual comments in the JPEG headers.
Tragek
As a young (19,) long distance hiker (Hiked the entire Appalachian Trail last year) I'm going to be pretty suprised if he can stick anywhere near that schedule. He's planning on going from Pinkham notch to Caratunk in 6 days, which is ~167 miles. That area is on par with the hardest sections of the trail, most thruhikers would be very impressed at averaging 20miles/day through there, yet he's intending to average 28!? In October no less, when there's could easily be a fair amount of snow on the ground. This hike has a lot common with M$, at least as far as big talk goes.
Blue Sky Tomorrows
Wait a minute. "Breaking new ground by... combining metadata with an image"????
Sigh. Astronomers have been doing this since at least 1981 with the FITS Format. See over here for the full story on this venerable and still very much in production format.
I sure hope M$ doesn't try something silly like a patent on this; it seems to me that FITS and the other formats used by the Medical and Geophysical Sciences would provide a wealth of prior art...
-- This
What is shown in the article is not very difficult at all. As long as you have location attached to the image *somehow*, just build an indexed database of localities, and link it to some form of web mapping tool (such as Mapserver, http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu)
The tricky bits will be: Building something that can handle large volumes of image data (places like Deviant Art seem to handle it OK, but it'd cost), and; (IMHO, the useful bit), some way of deciding which one of a million pictures of the Grand Canyon is worth seeing. In regards to the latter, some sort of ranking systeem ala Slashdot, and the ability to make queries on other metadata, such as time, azimuth and elevation, "Show me the most recent winter picture looking ouyt across the valley".
For your last trick, link images to Live Journal, so you can read all about how gothically depressed people were when they discovered the pictures were under-exposed.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
Works in Firebird 0.7
It would be great to have a whole INS inside the camera so it really knows where it is, where it's pointed (x,y,z+yaw,pitch,roll) , and how fast it's moving (well that one may not be as useful, but give us the data and the applications will come). A rangefinder would also be useful in finding out what the camera was really pointed at- you want to browse by image not by vantage point. Of course, right now that type of capability in a camera would cost $100K and be the size of a loaf of bread, but just wait...
And I forgot that it needs longrange wireless comm to immediately upload the pictures to a searchable server as they are taken.
I imagine google image search will have advanced search functions for location or other metadata soon enough and make the need for a centralized site like the one linked in the story unnecessary. Also google needs to add some facial recognition, so I can upload a picture of someone and it will return results with all other searchable pictures of that same person (and their location according to the GPS data on the most recent photo). Bad for stalkees, I suppose, but interesting tech.
Google Boogle Broother? I dunno, probably a better name than 'Froogle' was for their product search.
The load on the server also caused the hiker to have to wait for two hours at the Michigan border for his GPS-signed Microsoft Passport to be processed. He was then able to enter Michigan without having to go through Customs.
An article that appeared earlied this year in IEEE Pervasive Computing describes the principles of operation.
Diomidis Spinellis - #include "/dev/tty"
And don't forget the historical importance of such a site - people could (for example) search the archive for information about what advertisements were *really* being displayed in Times Square at the time that Spider-Man was released ;)
Check out The Degree Confluence Project for a more independent and manual approach. It's surprising how widely this project has covered already.
-- thinkyhead software and media