Photosynthing the Inauguration

CNN and Microsoft are attempting to create a moment-to-moment high resolution 3D model of the Obama inauguration using only submitted photographs from excited Obama onlookers...and Microsoft's Photosynth software. The technology works by finding commonalities among hundreds, or thousands, or even tens of thousands, of individual photographs of a particular event or place. Once processed, each image's position in the broader 3D context can be calculated with its visual information becoming part of a larger model. Microsoft has already used the technology to create visually stunning models of the Sphinx, the Statue of Liberty and more.

From Microsoft Live Labs:

The world will change on January 20th when Barack Obama, the President-elect takes the oath of office and becomes the 44th President of the United States. "I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of the President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." If you are going to be among the millions attending, you can be part of history by helping create the most immersive and detailed experience of a single moment ever created.

If successful, in many ways the project will provide as detailed and comprehensive a picture of the occasion as any professional news broadcast. And, in the future there is no reason this technology couldn’t make leap to video, as well. Videosynth? We might be looking at the future of citizen journalism.

iPhone Aerial Surveillance

Some students at Berkeley have found a way to bring Unmanned Arial Vehicles (UAVs) to the masses...and all you need is an iPhone:



Thank you Steve Jobs!

Surveillance and Mapping Software Together at Last

It seems like a lot of cities are announcing large scale facial recognition systems these days, which will definitely require an increase in data storage capabilities to store more and better footage. What I find more interesting than the storage angle in this piece, is mention of combining Microsoft’s Virtual Earth (which could just as easily be Google Earth, for that matter) with surveillance video--presumably this will/could be used to map in real time the location of bad guys and dispatch law enforcement as appropriate. It’s an interesting approach and no doubt going to be much more useful than the giant video walls normally deployed.