Blaise Aguera y Arcas's dashboard

A comment on the discussion "What features should we add to Photosynth?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

Seikan, note that although the processing is repeated for the time being (which is tedious, no denying it), the upload isn't repeated. The system knows when you've already uploaded a photo and doesn't re-upload it. – Blaise Aguera y Arcas, on August 24, 2008 03:41

Blaise Aguera y Arcas replied on August 24, 2008 03:36 to the idea "Make the uploading opt-in" in Microsoft Live Labs:

Austen, one of the nice things about the way it works now is that the computation and the upload are happening at the same time, in parallel-- in fact even in many parts of Oz (and barring 'publishing' hiccups of the kind we've been seeing for the past couple of days) a medium-sized synth (say, 80 images) will finish uploading and finish calculating almost at the same time. If we serialize those steps by default, then many people will end up waiting 2x as long to have their synth shared. Nonetheless I think the idea is interesting. We'll think about the different possible variations on this workflow. There are lots of pros and cons to consider. I do appreciate that big uploads can be a burden (we can all envy our friends in Japan), and also that some would rather look at the results before sharing.

Blaise Aguera y Arcas replied on August 24, 2008 03:28 to the question "Is Synthing Virtual Earth screen shots OK?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

I can't see that this would be a problem. But I'm not sure what kind of copyright you should give those images!

Blaise Aguera y Arcas replied on August 24, 2008 03:23 to the discussion "What features should we add to Photosynth?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

I agree that we really should improve the progress bar.

A comment on the discussion "What features should we add to Photosynth?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

stealthtech, the period and comma go through the photos in your order (meaning, based on the sorted filenames). Space and, I think, shift-Space go through the photos in a computed order designed to weave through the space as continuously as possible, so this shouldn't change (although it may not be quite identical on two runs, since the underlying algorithm is approximately solving an NP-hard problem using a bit of randomness. Feel free to ignore this parenthesis if it doesn't make sense :). – Blaise Aguera y Arcas, on August 24, 2008 03:21

Blaise Aguera y Arcas replied on August 24, 2008 03:07 to the discussion "Can Photosynth integrate aerial photographs from kites with role, yaw and different elevations?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

Clipo, those are really cool synths!

Blaise Aguera y Arcas replied on August 24, 2008 02:56 to the problem "Photosynth stuck a "Publishing" phase." in Microsoft Live Labs:

Peenie Wallie and others, thanks very much for your patience. We're all very keen to get this 'publishing synth' problem fully sorted out. Bert, Seth and others have stayed up nearly continuously for three days, and have improved the situation considerably, but we know we're not quite there yet. It still does occasionally hang on publish. Let's give them a day off before they jump back in the fray!

Blaise Aguera y Arcas replied on August 23, 2008 06:25 to the problem "The Photosynth site is a little overwhelmed just now ,this is the message i get since 3 days,when and how can i know ,when it will works . thanks ludovic from france,,,ludovicisone @gmail.com" in Microsoft Live Labs:

I think we're out of the woods.

Blaise Aguera y Arcas replied on August 23, 2008 05:25 to the question "Typical MS. Release !@#$ before its ready." in Microsoft Live Labs:

Uncle Eck, can you tell us what kind of graphics card you're packing. I think that's likely to be the problem.

Blaise Aguera y Arcas replied on August 23, 2008 03:00 to the problem "Photosynth stuck a "Publishing" phase." in Microsoft Live Labs:

Yes, I'd give the synths new names. It'll still go faster than the first time, since the system will recognize that some or all of the images are already there.

Blaise Aguera y Arcas replied on August 23, 2008 02:52 to the problem "Photosynth stuck a "Publishing" phase." in Microsoft Live Labs:

Our ops guys have just emailed me that they may have found & fixed the problem. Let's try synthing again and see what happens!

Blaise Aguera y Arcas replied on August 23, 2008 02:50 to the problem "Photosynth stuck a "Publishing" phase." in Microsoft Live Labs:

Peenie, essentially this product *is* in beta, yes. With a web service there's not much meaning to the 'beta' label these days, unfortunately-- testing involves putting it out there, so *every* web service is a 'beta' in its first few months. (Conversely, some very mature web services are still called 'betas', for reasons I can't quite fathom.) We have had it working well in the Microsoft community for some months, but of course all kinds of crazy stuff comes up for the first time when something like this encounters 'real life'-- meaning real people, real server loads, real heterogeneity, and real worldwide traffic. We're doing our utmost to improve it as quickly as possible. Your feedback is very valuable to us. Your first synths do seem to be turning out quite decently, though! :)

Blaise Aguera y Arcas replied on August 23, 2008 02:07 to the problem "Photosynth stuck a "Publishing" phase." in Microsoft Live Labs:

To be clear, there should be *no* pipeline or queue-- the progress bar should reflect progress, and it shouldn't hang out on 'publishing synth' for long at all. As soon as it's done, a view button appears, and that's it. In other words, this is a bug we know about and are working hard on right now, not a design flaw. (Not that there aren't design flaws in our service too.) This bug was probably introduced when we scaled up after yesterday's outages. Birth pains.

Blaise Aguera y Arcas replied on August 23, 2008 01:51 to the problem "Photosynth stuck a "Publishing" phase." in Microsoft Live Labs:

Peenie, we know this is frustrating! It's certainly not the intended behavior. Publishing should be quick and it should be available for viewing immediately. We're working on it!

Blaise Aguera y Arcas replied on August 23, 2008 01:32 to the discussion "What features should we add to Photosynth?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

This is stealthtech's posting on a different thread-- reposting here to make sure we don't miss it. He's talking about image ordering (does order matter).

I was wondering that myself. If it has some importance should that be clearified with the community? I was figuring that the GUI did not do it there for it was not important. Could I suggest that may adding the abiltiy to re-arange by dragging and droping images. Or some GUI icons to represent chaning of the order. Again if it is not a big issue then no problem. But if it is an issue to have a zoomed in image first instead of a panned out shoot then it would be nice to re-order the images. Then in the composer would be nice to do it before uploading.

Blaise Aguera y Arcas replied on August 23, 2008 01:30 to the question "Does the order in which I upload my pictures matter?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

stealthtech, I'm reposting your comment in the 'features wanted' discussion, as I think it's a good suggestion. It's something we have considered, but it'll require writing a custom control instead of using the standard Windows file chooser (which not only doesn't support rearranging, but doesn't even provide a reliable file ordering).

Blaise Aguera y Arcas replied on August 23, 2008 00:08 to the problem "bird's eye geotagging doesn't work" in Microsoft Live Labs:

Bummer, you're right! We'll file this bug.
We have a long way to go with our geotagging support. Thanks for the feedback.

Blaise Aguera y Arcas replied on August 23, 2008 00:05 to the problem "Photosynth stuck a "Publishing" phase." in Microsoft Live Labs:

jed, it shows up under your synths-- if you're signed in, the link is near the top right of the page. You can also search (top right) for your name, the name of the synth, any tag, something in the caption.
Of course, it may take a while to show up. Hopefully that'll be fixed soon.

Blaise Aguera y Arcas replied on August 22, 2008 23:59 to the problem "Photosynth stuck a "Publishing" phase." in Microsoft Live Labs:

I actually ran into this too. If it seems stuck on publishing (the last phase) for a long time, one thing you should know is that probably this is a server queuing issue (we're working on that), not a synthing issue. You can close the synther, shut the laptop, start a new synth (after closing the synther, that is), whatever-- it's likely that that synth will actually show up sometime in the not-too-distant future.

A comment on the discussion "What features should we add to Photosynth?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

Great feedback Hayden, thanks! – Blaise Aguera y Arcas, on August 22, 2008 23:47