Explore Photos in 3 Dimensions

I just blogged about TED, a conference about ideas. Another fascinating technology that was demoed there presents a new way of interacting with and understanding information — in this case, visual information.

In his presentation on Microsoft’s Photosynth technology, Blaise Aguera y Arcas blew away the audience with a demonstration of how photographs on the public internet can be used to create 3d models of their subjects. Individual photographs become components in a larger collaborative project, undertaken by software that uses material produced by casual and professional photographers alike. With this software on the loose, your photos of places you visit become gateways through which you can experience the collective photographic memory of the internet. Best of all, Photosynth is publicly available for testing now.

This is part of my larger interest in new and creative ways of visualizing information. More about that in this short article.

UPDATE: Photosynth as a Service