Photosynth Goes Public: Create Your Own Today!

Brandon LeBlanc — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 05:16:00 GMT

Today, Microsoft Live Labs has announced the worldwide availability of Photosynth where users can create their own Photosynth collections - or "Synths" - for free. Previously, Photosynth was only available as a Technology Preview without the ability to create your own Synths.

To start using Photosynth yourself, just head on over to the new Photosynth website and login with your Windows Live ID and create a Photosynth ID. This Photosynth ID will be tied to whatever Synths you create. Depending on the number of photos in your Synth, it could take anywhere between 2 to 30 or more minutes to create and upload. When you create a Synth, you can give your Synth a name, description and even assign it some tags. Everyone is given a quote of 20GB for their Synths.

To view and create Synths, a 7MB plug-in must be installed first from either Internet Explorer (6 or 7) or Mozilla Firefox (2 or 3).

The Photosynth plug-in does all of the processing - or "synthing" - of your photos prior to uploading the results to the Photosynth website.

The installation of this plug-in also puts a link to Photosynth on your Start Menu for quick Photosynth access!

So how does Photosynth work? Photosynth analyzes your photos for similarities to your other photos in the set and then uses the information to estimate where the photos were was taken from. Photosynth then re-creates the place the photos were taken and uses that as a canvas to display your photos. Pretty neat huh? The work done in analyzing your photos is done via the above mentioned Photosynth plug-in.

Want to know how to make good Synths? No problem. Check out the Photosynth Guide which explains in great detail how to take photos that can be used to create good Synths in Photosynth. You can also watch this awesome "How-to" video from Laura Foy on creating good Synths in Photosynth as well.

You should also check out the Encyclopedia of Life Synths. These are great examples of some of the Synths you can create. The Encyclopedia of Life is a global project to document and photography the Earth's 1.8 million species and make the information freely available via the Internet.

Photosynth allows you to also embed Synths directly into websites and blog posts. To celebrate tonight's launch - I've created my very first Synth from images taken a few months ago from the top of the Space Needle. I took a lot of shots from different angles that I thought would make a perfect Synth.

Click here to view a larger version of my Synth.

My Space Needle Synth consisted of 95 images. Those 95 images together was about 176MB. It took me about 20 minutes to "synth" these photos together and upload them to the Photosynth website. Each Synth has a "synthiness" rating. My Space Needle Synth has 96% Synthy. The more synthy you are - the more "connected" your photos are in that Synth. You want to be synthy.

Photosynth is a very exciting release and I can't wait to see all the cool Synths people will be uploading. Try out Photosynth today and leave a comment with a link to some of your Synths for me to check out!

Channel 10's Nic Fillingham got to sit down and chat with several members of the Photosynth Team for Channel 10's photography show ShutterSpeed. Give it a watch.

Be sure to keep your eyes on the Photosynth Team Blog for more on Photosynth!

Origami Experience 2.0 Part 1: Web Browsing

Brandon LeBlanc — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 09:10:00 GMT

In Part 1 of my 4 part series of blog posts looking at the Origami Experience 2.0 software, I am going to talk about one of the most important new experiences in the new release: browsing the web directly in Origami Central. Origami Central, one of the three apps in the Origami Experience, has the built in capability to browse webpages just as you would in IE7. ActiveX controls work just fine in the browsing experience of Origami Central - as does Flash and Silverlight (demo video below!).

In Origami Central, the browsing experience is tied to the toolbar that auto-hides at the top of the window.

Because the toolbar auto-hides, I get a full screen web browsing experience and with a UMPC running at 1024x600 resolution without toolbars and other things taking up useful screen real-estate.

Just like in IE7, I can use the address bar in Origami Central to do web searches. But in Origami Central, when I type something in the address bar (a phrase or URL), it searches through the history of websites I have already visited. I typed in "windows" into the address bar and these 3 previously visited websites came up:

To do web searches, Origami Central provides a really unique way of searching the web using Live Search. When I type in a search term, it provides a list of popular searches that change depending on the term of course. It also provides previous searches I've made.

Basic functionality for web browsing such as adding favorites also exists in Origami Central. In the toolbar, when I click the gadget-looking icon a list of options appears over the website I am on. Those options allow me to add the site to my favorites (which uses the same favorites as IE), add the site's RSS to my RSS feeds, take a snapshot of the site, or use the zoom capabilities.

When I take a snapshot of a website, it takes a complete "freeze" of the page I am at. I can go back to that site and read the site or access links etc. I can even scroll down to view other parts of the site (as long as it's on the same page of course).

My favorites, history, and snapshots are all available in my "Library" by clicking the star icon in the toolbar.

Origami Central also has touch capabilities as well but I think perhaps my demo video will be better at showcasing that feature (as well as the above mentioned features of web browsing in Origami Central. Take a look!

Web Browsing with Origami Central

In the demo video, I utilize the touch capabilities in Origami Central to navigate Photosynth from Microsoft Live Labs. You can also see the overall experience of browsing the web via Origami Central first hand. I apologize in advance for some parts of the video (like where it sounds like I said "stylist" instead of stylus).

Stay tuned for Part 2 in which I discuss the new RSS capabilities in Origami Experience 2.0 with Origami Central.

Windows Experience Blog : Photosynth

Photosynth Goes Public: Create Your Own Today!

Origami Experience 2.0 Part 1: Web Browsing