Our good friend, Chris Pendleton, decided it was time to give the technical peeps out there a sneak peak into how Bing Maps created the Streetside user experience. So, while our satellite imagery and orthographic aerial photography (Aerial map style) provide great context to accompany our vector-based raster maps (Road map style) and our oblique imagery (Bird’s Eye map style) is even higher resolution for increased zoom and cardinal rotation capabilities, Streetside brings you down to ground level (and you can go inside with Photosynth). Anyhow, for those of you interested in how they use Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) with photography (Photogrammetric processing) through a Silverlight interface and vector road information for reference points- this video is for you!
The Making of StreetSide in Bing Maps
Today I’d like to introduce you to another piece of new technology from Microsoft Research Labs – Image Composite Editor (ICE) with Multi-Image Fusion. In the current version of ICE, it provides advanced features for panoramic stitching such as choosing the stitch’s orientation, custom projection, and selecting a 360 stitch’s mid-point, and this tool also integrates nicely as a plug-in into Windows Live Photo Gallery. Here we’ll show you some of the upcoming new features in ICE such as:
- Structured Panoramas
- Stitching Panoramas from Video
- Sharp Panoramas from Blurry Videos
- Creating Photographs from Videos
- Multi-Image Denoising and Sharpening using Lucky Imaging
Making a 3D Model From a Photosynth
There’s an interesting video on YouTube from Binary Millenium showing how to make a 3D model out of real objects using Microsoft’s Photosynth. It’s an interesting idea that, while unofficial, may be a big time saver and a lot of fun for many of you.
This will work best if you use a Photosynth that not only has a high rate of ’synthiness’ but also lots of points in the point cloud. A point in the point cloud means that a specific feature has been identified in two or more photos, allowing for Photosynth to determine to some degree where in space that point exists. While a good Photosynth might have 100% synthiness, meaning all the pictures are connected, it doesn’t necessarily mean there will be lots of points in the point cloud.
The Tech Behind The Hard Rock Cafe
While there’s nothing wrong with the California Club, you don’t go to a Hard Rock Cafe because you love food. You go because you love music, and now you’re likely to stay longer because you love technology. Knowing the value of memorabilia, Hard Rock took on the huge task of photographing their memorabilia collection in high resolution, feeding it into their office SharePoint. Today, that SharePoint drives the Hard Rock Memorabilia site, the 18′x4′ multitouch “Rock Wall” in Orlando, the Rock Wall Solo in Seattle, all the Hard Rock Microsoft Surface computers, and Microsoft Pivot. And all of it is tagged and indexed with the inside story and Deep Zoomable.
The access to this content is incredible when you think about it. These rockers could teach the world a thing or two about how digital curation is done. Think of how much stuff sits on a shelf at the Smithsonian, Vatican, and thousands of other museums and art galleries around the world. In this video, Hard Rock CIO Joe Tenczar gives us a tour of some of the tech you’ll see in the latest Hard Rock Cafes.
Here is a link to the Photosynth of Tommy Alsop’s wallet that I mentioned in the video. And don’t miss my behind the scenes look at the Hard Rock Cafe warehouse.
Have You Seen Bing Map Apps?
Here’s a tip you might not have seen yet. If you go to http://www.bing.com/maps/explore, you’ll see a panel on the left. At the bottom of that panel on the right edge you’ll see a button called “Map Apps”. If you click that you’ll find 19 applications that run on top of Bing. Some of the apps include:
- Twitter Maps updates from Twitter are applied to Bing maps around the world.
- Photosynth 3D photo browsing through synths inside Bing.
- Urban Graffiti Images of spray painted graffiti in cities.
- Urban Murals These are murals across the world including things like the huge guitar mural on the side of Hard Rock Cafe Nashville.
- TrafficLand An amazing array of live traffic video from across the U.S.
- Local Events See what events are happening around you.
- Newseum See newspaper front pages for cities across the world.
Bing Maps Publishes Post-Earthquake Imagery
Bing Maps has been updated with post-earthquake images from Port-au-Prince, Haiti. According to Chris Pendleton the new imagery comes from Digital Globe’s Worldview 2 satellite (the one launched in the rocket with the Bing logo.) Updated imagery will be added as it comes in. MSNBC.com has created a Photosynth from some images from Haiti and an HD-View image from GeoEye satellite imagery.
You can find a list of charitable organizations helping in Haiti here at MSNBC.
Photosynth Update and New UI
The Photosynth Blog mentions that a new version of Photosynth has gone live, most of the changes cosmetic to make a cleaner, more intuitive and streamlined UI. On hovering over the view control, you can see the new pop up that lets you view a synth in normal 3D, overhead, a 2D photo grid, and a Point Cloud-only view, which is new.
There are also some performance enhancements with zooming that you will probably notice right away. Check out the Photosynth Blog for more info.
First Look: Streetside in Bing Maps
This is a huge day for Bing Maps and as you’ll see in this video a really great day for developers as well. Streetside imagery has been integrated into Bing Maps and they released the beta Silverlight version of the site. Other great features include enhanced birds eye, the application gallery, photosynth and simplified navigation. Chris Pendleton took me for a test drive to show off how it all works and there is some extra special devevloper love at the end just for you guys.
Check out Chris’ blog post for more info.
Anandan Talks About Digital Heritage Project
P. Anandan, who leads Microsoft Research in India, stopped by to show us a project they worked on called the India Digital Heritage Project. This was a very cool attempt to recreate the experience of visiting historic sites around India through the combined use of Photosynth, HD View, video, and ambient sound. While much of the presentation is ‘on rails’ like a theme park tour, just like with World Wide Telescope you can stop the tour at any time and wander off clicking and zooming and looking at the sites, and then click to jump right back into the tour. It’s a very interesting example of what’s possible with tools available today.
For entertainment purposes only we decided to invited our friend, established comedian Kirk Fox into the Ping lair…here’s how it all went down:
Jonathon Mann wins a BINGLE
Secret Service SQL Server
PhotoSynth and Facebook
What does Zune HD mean for you?
Do viral videos work?
And more…let us know your thoughts!