Sunday, July 8, 2007

Using Photosynth as a tour guide

In case you still haven't seen Photosynth:

Our software takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for similarities, and then displays the photos in a reconstructed three-dimensional space, showing you how each one relates to the next.

http://labs.live.com/photosynth/

Note that the software actually identifies the positions of the cameras that took the pictures in the collection.

So in fact, you can use this approach as a tour guide, taking you to places from which many pictures were taken (i.e., the positions of the cameras).

Imagine for example walking around a city while a device points you to nearby places from which many pictures were taken and orienting you in the direction of the often photographed scene.

Such a device could take into account context (e.g., time of day, season, purpose of the photograph, etc.).

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