Entries tagged with live labs - Channel 10

Live Labs Just Keeps Innovating

sarahintampa — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 14:24:00 GMT

Lately, people have been surprised by some of the things that the Microsoft Live Labs team has been putting out. Why is Microsoft making an iPhone app?, I’ve heard people say. Well, why not? The goal of Live Labs is to think outside the box, innovate, create, and push those creations live to the public frequently. The group, created about three years ago, is just now really taking off. According to Microsoft Live Labs Project Manager Alex Daley, we’re going to start seeing output from Live Labs “every few weeks” where last year, it may have been every few months instead.

Have you seen everything Live Labs has released recently? No doubt you heard about the SeaDragon iPhone app, but maybe you missed something else. Look at what Live Labs has been up to lately:

SeaDragon iPhone app: The new SeaDragon app (see our video) was a hobby project by Ben Vanik of Live Labs. With it, you can browse several online collections- the Library of Congress maps from the TED demo or a two-billion by two-billion pixel map of the world. You can also load custom content via a RSS feed or just upload your massive images to Photosynth or PhotoZoom.
Photosynth: One of the most popular releases from Live Labs so far is Photosynth (see our video), an online tool for uploading and browsing collections of photos in 3D. In November, the technology was also integrated into Live Maps.
Social Streams: Around election time, we were introduced to the Political Streams project, which analyzed news coverage and social media from across the internet, including blogs, newsgroups, and web sites. The site tracked what stories were popular and if that popularity was increasing or decreasing. The underlying technology powering the project is Social Streams, which could be carried on to support other projects in the future, even though it has been removed as of now.
Thumbtack: More recently, we saw the launch of Thumbtack, an online notebook for collected links, text, and media found on the web. The tool, ideal for those doing research, also allows you to collaborate with others by allowing them to also add clips and notations to the collected items.
Web Sandbox: Another Live Labs project is Web Sandbox, a tool that addresses the problem of sites running third-party code that can slow them down or hamper the experience either on purpose or by mistake. The Web Sandbox addresses this problem through virtualization. We provide an opportunity to test the Sandbox and find out whether it prevents the attacks you’re concerned about. It's designed to improve the security, isolation and quality of service for your site and your users.
Entity Extraction: This project focuses on using machine learning to identify meaningful text in documents. The idea with this is that you could highlight text on any website and get additional information in a pop-up window. For example, highlight an address and get a popup map. Unlike with semantic web projects, Entity Extraction could retrieve this information from even the “unstructured web.”

These are just some of the projects the Live Labs team is working on. You can explore some others here. We can’t wait to see what they come up with next!

Seadragon para iPhone

Galileu — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 10:22:00 GMT

Seadragon é a plataforma por trás das minhas tecnologias preferidas – Deep Zoom do Silverlight, Photosynth e até Windows 7 e Surface. Essa plataforma permite que você visualize imagens gigantescas (gigapixels) sem o mínimo esforço do seu computador. Agora o pessoal do Live Labs, o braço de pesquisa e desenvolvimento da Microsoft para tecnologias Web, lançou uma versão para celulares. Detalhe, a primeira versão é para iPhone e está disponível de graça na App Store do iPhone.

Para usar essa tecnologia, a maneira mais rápida é fazer um upload de suas fotos para o serviço do Photosynth. As fotos não precisam seguir as regras do Photosynth para recriar a figura 3D, pois estamos usando o Photosynth como um álbum virtual nesse caso. No Seadragon Mobile você fará um login e aparecerão os seus álbuns do Photosynth e você também pode adicionar as coleções de outros usuários do Photosynth.

Tem duas coisas que acho importantes nessa notícia. Primeiro, o Live Labs está realizando seu propósito de existência – inovação rápida e impactante para a Web. Segundo, mostra a cara da nova Microsoft, já que a primeira versão dessa tecnologia foi disponibilizada para o iPhone. Veja o post oficial sobre o Seadragon para Mobile onde há um vídeo de demonstração. Meu colega Larry Larsen entrevistou o criador dessa versão do Seadragon, o Ben Vanik do Live Labs. Ah, outro detalhe, essa invenção surgiu do tempo livre que cada pesquisador do Live Labs tem para inventar coisas sem objetivos concretos.

Thumbtack, An Online Notebook From Live Labs

sarahintampa — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 14:54:00 GMT

There’s a new web clipping service now available from Microsoft Live Labs: Thumbtack. With this online notebook, you can collect links, media like photos and video, and text snippets, and store them in collections for later reference. The tool, ideal for those doing research on the web, also allows you to collaborate with others by allowing them to also add clips and notations to the collected items.

To use Thumbtack, entries can either be cut and pasted in manually, or a browser bookmarklet can be used. The bookmarklet works in both IE and Firefox and is platform agnostic. Everything you save is stored in “Collections.” You can make the collections either private for your use only, or you can invite others to join them. The Collections can also be published via RSS and/or embedded on your web site or blog.

A unique feature called “Gadgets” let you work with the items you’ve saved in ways that other similar web clipping services do not. At launch time, there’s an Address gadget that finds addresses in your web clippings and maps them out, a Layout gadget that helps you rearrange items on the Thumbtack canvas, a Plot gadget that looks at all the properties and values on the items in your collection and allows you to create a scatter plot or a bar chart, and a Properties gadget that lets you add any property and value (such as ‘price’: 25) to any item.

In the future, developers will be able to create their own gadgets and the Thumbtack team will release some gadgets that allow importing or exporting the data from spreadsheets and other Office applications.

Although the service feels a little raw at the moment (the UI needs some tweaking), its those differences mentioned above – especially the promise of being able to develop for it – make Thumbtack a promising new service worth keeping your eye on.

You can learn more about Thumbtack in this video:

See this video on MSN Soapbox

Photosynth Comes To Live Maps

sarahintampa — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 02:24:00 GMT

There’s a new feature now available on Live Maps: Photosynth! The Microsoft Live Labs technology, Photosynth, which launched publicly back in August, allows you take your photos and turn them into rich, 3-D experiences. Now, with the new Live Maps integration, you can explore the world in the very same way as you explored your own synthed photos.

As you navigate in a map or zoom in or out in a particular location in Live Maps, you can choose to display pushpins for each Photosynth available in that area. You then just click the “launch Photosynth viewer” link to dive in and start exploring those synths.

You can try this now in Seattle, in Cairo at the Sphinx, in Vatican city, or at the Leaning tower of Pisa, for example.

The Sphinx – Cairo, Egypt

Photosynths are not shown by default in Live Maps, but are a part of the user-generated collections feature. Turning them on is easy, though - here’s how:

1) Search for for any location where synths may be available or manually drag your map there. Try “Paris,” for example.

2) Turn on Explore mode (Click Collections –> Explore collections). This turns on all the user-generated content, not just synths.

3) Filter to display just synths: At the top of the Explore panel, press the Photosynth button.

4) Now you’ll see just the synths display.

5) Enjoy!

Note: to explore Photosynths, you must have already installed the Photosynth viewer found here.

New From Live Labs: Political Streams

sarahintampa — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 04:56:00 GMT

The Live Labs team has just released a new project, Political Streams, and just in time as the U.S. Presidential election draws near. The site mines social media from across the internet, including blogs, newsgroups, and web sites, in order to track what stories are popular and if that popularity is increasing or decreasing.

When you click into an article on Political Streams, you’ll see a snippet of text from the article’s start and a link to the source if you’re interested in reading the complete story. Beneath this text are charts and graphs that show the attention the people and places mentioned in that particular story have seen over time. On the right, you’ll also see links to related information like other articles on news sites and blogs as well as links to people and places. Those people and places are generated by leveraging the API from the online open database project, Freebase.

The Political Streams site was built on the Social Streams platform, a platform that mines the social web for data. BLEWS, an earlier project by Microsoft Research, was also built on this platform.

How To Use Photosynth In 4 Easy Steps

sarahintampa — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 05:01:00 GMT

So now that you’ve heard the big news about Photosynth, you’re probably dying to get started with your first synth. Well, get your camera ready, because here’s all you need to know as to how to use this new technology

STEP 1: TAKE PICTURES

When you’re creating your first synth, remember the rule of “3” – each part of the scene you shoot should appear in at least 3 separate photos from different locations. Try for at least 50% overlap when taking the pictures. Take a panamora shot and then move around – the wider the shot, the better.

STEP 2: EDITS

Photographers usually want to do all kinds of tweaking to pics, but with Photosnyth, there are things you don’t want to do, such as the following:

don’t crop
don’t do any geometric transformations like flips and perspective transforms
don’t use artistic filters (de-noise may be safe, though)
don’t use watermarks (Photosynth provides something for this itself)

You can, however, adjust color and contrast without any worries.

STEP 3: SYNTH IT

If you haven’t already, download the free software from http://photosynth.com. The software works alongside the web site, also a free service. From the Photosynth site, click on “Create” and pick the pictures you want to use. Give your creation a name and click on “Synth.” Photosynth automatically creates and uploads your synth which can then be accessed from any XP or Vista PC.

STEP 4: SHARE IT

Your finished synth can be embedded on web sites, blogs, social networks, or any other page where HTML can be edited. You can see other people’s synths that they’ve created and leave comments, too.

ShutterSpeed EP04 - The Photosynth Team

Nic — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 18:00:00 GMT

By now most of you have probably heard of Photosynth. The cool new technology from Microsoft that allows you to explore collections of full resolution photos by relationship in an amazing, interactive 3D space.

From today (9PM PST) Photosynth is being released to the public which means anyone with access to a digital camera, PC and internet connection can create their own Photosynth collections. Just visit photosynth.net, download the app (approx 8MB) and start synthing.

To coincide with the release of Photosynth to the masses we thought it might be fun to sit down with 1/5th of the development team behind the technology to learn some more about how Photosynth works and how best to go about creating collections of photos specifically for synthing.

Joining me for this episode of ShutterSpeed is Live Labs and Photosynth Architect Blaise Aguera y Arcas (who you might recognize from this infamous TED presentation), Scientist Drew Steedley and Program Manager Scott Fynn.

Check out Max's interview with Rick Szeliski and Noah Snavely over on Channel 8 for more on the genesis (and genius!) of Photosynth. And for those of you about to grab your camera and go shoot some photos for a little synth action make sure you first watch Laura's how-to-synth video for tips and tricks.

Vídeo - A Microsoft Live Labs lança o Photosynth

Galileu — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 00:04:00 GMT

O Live Labs é o braço da Microsoft Research que faz pesquisa e desenvolvimento especificamente para a Internet. Do pessoal do Live Labs já saiu, por exemplo, o Deep Zoom, um componente de destaque do Silverlight 2.0. Agora, mais uma novidade do pessoal do Live Labs – o Photosynth está aberto para o uso de todos.

Para quem não conhece, o Photosynth é uma forma completamente inovadora de vivenciar as suas fotos digitais. Em vez de ver fotos individuais tiradas no mesmo local, o Photosynth consegue encaixar todas as fotos no seu lugar correto num espaço tridimensional. A tecnologia analisa as suas fotos, identifica os pontos de sobreposição e utiliza essa informação para reconstruir um espaço gráfico 3D e nele encaixar cada foto em seu devido lugar. O usuário não precisa fazer nada além de alimentar as suas fotos – o Photosynth cuida de tudo.

Existem algumas regras básicas para criar um bom synth, por isso recomendo ver o vídeo legendado desse post que mostra os passos iniciais. Depois, baixe o guia em português que entra em maiores detalhes com dicas importantes e assuntos para fotógrafos avançados.

O site do Photosynth utiliza Live ID para autenticação. Se você tem Hotmail ou usa o Windows Live Messenger, é o mesmo login e senha desses serviços. Lá, você terá direito a 20GB de espaço para armazenar os seus synths. Para usar o Photosynth é preciso instalar um plug-in de 8MB que roda em Internet Explorer 6 e 7 ou Firefox 2 e 3 para Windows XP e Windows Vista. O site permite comentários dos usuários, compartilhamento via link direto para o synth e, o mais bacana, você pode embed, ou incorporar, o synth no seu próprio site via iframe. É só copiar e colar o código.

Para o lançamento, estamos com vários parceiros produzindo conteúdo interessante. National Geographic, o governo federal americano, o governo nacional da Turquia, NASCAR, entre outros. Aqui no Brasil a Microsoft trabalhou com a agência Megaphoto e seu fotógrafo Rodrigo Acedo para testar a tecnologia. Eles produziram uns synths bem bacanas da Catedral da Sé e do Monumento às Bandeiras.

Catedral da Sé - São Paulo

Monumento às Bandeiras - São Paulo

Acho que todos vão achar o Photosynth bacana. Não se esqueçam de colocar tags nas suas fotos, e coloquem a tag Brasil para que o mundo possa encontrar nosso conteúdo bem fácil. Mais um detalhe, você pode marcar o geoposicionamento dos seus synths. Depois do synth aparecer no site, entre nele para editá-lo e lá aparecerá um ícone de um globo. Clique nele para ver o Virtual Earth e apontar no mapa o local de seu synth.

Dê um pulo no www.photosynth.com, veja os synths que estão lá e crie os seus próprios synths. Se encontrar ou criar algo bacana, mande aqui pra mim!

Live Labs Shadow Box on the Surface

Nic — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 13:57:00 GMT

Now this is cool. Jeff Weir and John Lynn work in the Microsoft Live Labs team (that's the group that created Photosynth). They also have a couple of Surface units in their office. So the two of them came up with an idea to build a little application called Shadow Box (or unofficially "nightmare box") that 'burns' in and out images of what the infrared camera inside the surface sees. The end result is both awesome and spooky! Check out the video of Shadow Box in action.

More on Live Labs: http://labs.live.com/

Congrats to Live Labs' Jeff Weir

Larry — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 02:29:00 GMT

Jeff Weir is a UX Designer in Microsoft's Live Labs. Between free alcohol, parties, more alcohol, more parties, and a general lack of sleep, Jeff managed to win the South by Southwest (SXSW) Web Award in the Art category. Jeff's application, Viscosity, is a modern art generator.

Viscosity kind of reminds me of some of Shirley Shor's work that was featured on Celebrity Apprentice last week. While I looked at Shirley's vastly expensive framed LCD panel playing through moving artwork, I thought to myself "Hey, I could make that with an old Tablet PC... well, except for the moving art part." Well, now I think I'll just frame a spare Tablet PC and direct it to Jeff's Viscosity watch page. Very cool. Congrats Jeff.

Vídeo: Zumobi para Windows Mobile

Galileu — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 09:42:00 GMT

O Zumobi foi lançado semana passada para celulares com Windows Mobile. A equipe do Zumobi saiu da Microsoft onde trabalhava junto ao time do Live Labs - a galera responsável pelas tecnologias por trás de SeaDragon, Photosynth, Listas, Deepfish, e até produts Windows Live, entre outros. Para quem já mexeu com o Photosynth (você pode testar no site), a semelhança de navegação no Zumobi é clara. Utilizando os efeitos de zoom, a interface do Zumobi carrega o conteúdo sem a necessidade de utilizar uma interface de navegador Web. O conceito tecnológico vem da pesquisa com SeaDragon, cujos princípios são:
1. Velocidade de navegação independe do tamanho ou número de objetos
2. Desempenho depende somente na proporção de banda para pixels na tela

Veja nesse vídeo curto como funciona o Zumobi num Smartphone (aquele sem tela de toque) e você verá esse conceito em ação.

New Photosynth collection: Gyeongbok Palace in South Korea

Jesse — Fri, 18 May 2007 18:25:00 GMT

One of the things that makes Photosynth such an exciting Microsoft Live Labs project is its ability to bring the far corners of the world to your desk. This latest Photosynth exploration of Gyeongbok Palace in Seoul represents a 4,000 photos and a month’s worth of submissions. The result is an ancient Asian experience unlike any other on the web. As with previous coverage of Photosynth on Channel 10, the experience of moving through a 3D collection of images is very Blade Runner. Hopefully this also represents progress by the Live Labs team towards empowering all of you to help model your own world.

Live Labs launches Photosynth Technology Preview

Jesse — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 21:50:00 GMT

Photosynth has got to be the coolest creation from the whiz kids inside Microsoft Live Labs (as we've shown here on 10). Now they've decided the time is right to unleash their creation to the public. We've been playing with this internally at the 10 HQ for a few weeks and it's clear now that going back to any other photography experience just doesn't stand up.

Provided you meet the photosynth system requirements, download the tech preview for yourself, fill it full of last summer's vacation photos, and prepare to be impressed.