Blaise Aguera y Arcas's dashboard

Blaise Aguera y Arcas set one of Blaise Aguera y Arcas' replies as an official response to "Searching for a synth" in Microsoft Live Labs

Blaise Aguera y Arcas replied on August 22, 2008 22:45 to the question "Searching for a synth" in Microsoft Live Labs:

Ah good, an easy one :). See the 'Search synths' box on the upper right? That should work for searching the synth name, caption, tags, or user. As for sending it to your friend, you can navigate to a view you like in a synth, and press the 'envelope' button under the synth caption. Copy the text that appears into an email. Clicking that link will bring your friend to this exact spot. Hope this helps!

Blaise Aguera y Arcas replied on August 22, 2008 22:42 to the question "Stuck on the "Reconstructing Scene" stage." in Microsoft Live Labs:

Papi, what does the synther say? Is it matching, reconstructing, uploading, or publishing? If it's uploading or publishing, that means all the calculation is done (and presumably has been for a long time, as 58 photos should only take a few minutes at most to calculate). Uploading 58 photos should take no longer than a batch upload of that many photos to any photo sharing site. If as I suspect it's stuck on publishing, then this is a server load issue, and we're working hard on it now. Apologies.

Blaise Aguera y Arcas set one of Blaise Aguera y Arcas' replies as an official response to "Embed Photoynth" in Microsoft Live Labs

Blaise Aguera y Arcas replied on August 22, 2008 22:21 to the question "Embed Photoynth" in Microsoft Live Labs:

Under the synth description, there are a few buttons, one of which looks like <>. This is the 'embed' button. When you click it, you get the JavaScript snippet you can use to embed the synth in your webpage. Enjoy!

Blaise Aguera y Arcas replied on August 22, 2008 22:14 to the question "Stuck on the "Reconstructing Scene" stage." in Microsoft Live Labs:

650 is *really* big-- it's very likely that the synther will both take a long time and run out of memory! (Fyi, we are working on improving the algorithms further to let synths of this size work.) The synther warns you at 300, and I'd recommend (even on a very beefy machine) keeping it well under 500. Contrary to what some of the press has said, more photos also doesn't necessarily = a better synth. Some of the best synths on the site are <100 images.

A comment on the question "will a photosynth "offline" version be released ?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

Understood-- we'll keep this request in mind. – Blaise Aguera y Arcas, on August 22, 2008 21:53

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

You can do this! There's an embed feature (the <> icon under the synth caption) that gives you the JavaScript to embed. – Blaise Aguera y Arcas, on August 22, 2008 20:41

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

I think this is a great idea. It's something we've talked about doing and are considering. – Blaise Aguera y Arcas, on August 22, 2008 20:37

Blaise Aguera y Arcas replied on August 22, 2008 20:36 to the idea "More PR for the geotag feature" in Microsoft Live Labs:

Geotagging is pretty rudimentary in this release. Expect that to improve!

Blaise Aguera y Arcas started following the idea "More PR for the geotag feature" in Microsoft Live Labs.

Blaise Aguera y Arcas set one of Blaise Aguera y Arcas' replies as an official response to "Can I correct a wrongly rotated thumbnail image?" in Microsoft Live Labs

A comment on the question "Can I correct a wrongly rotated thumbnail image?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

You bet! – Blaise Aguera y Arcas, on August 22, 2008 20:34

Blaise Aguera y Arcas replied on August 22, 2008 20:29 to the question "Can I correct a wrongly rotated thumbnail image?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

Unfortunately, can't fix this once it's up-- sorry. If you rotate the image you used the right way up using any image editing software, Windows Live Photo Gallery, ..., then you can be sure that the thumbnail will come out the right way. The thumbnail is sent to the server exactly as it was in the original image, not rotated based on the inferred synth orientation. One small piece of good news: if you re-make the synth using the same photos, the system will be smart enough not to repeat the upload. Your computer will still have to do all the calculations again, though :(. If you do fix this, be sure to delete your first synth.

Blaise Aguera y Arcas shared an idea in Microsoft Live Labs on August 22, 2008 20:22:

Keyboard commands - hidden features!

Many people have asked about keyboard shortcuts. Yes, we should probably have made these more prominent. They're all online at the bottom of this doc:
http://photosynth.net/documentation/P...
Some of these don't have buttons in the GUI, so there are a number of hidden features here! Enjoy.

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

You bet! We should have the keyboard shortcuts less hidden, but they're here http://photosynth.net/documentation/P... – Blaise Aguera y Arcas, on August 22, 2008 20:17

Blaise Aguera y Arcas replied on August 22, 2008 20:13 to the question "will a photosynth "offline" version be released ?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

Yes-- this scenario is actually best realized by giving you the ability for online synths to be private or restricted, rather than making an offline experience-- that way you could share it only with your family and friends, even if they're viewing remotely (not in front of your computer). We're certainly considering this!

A comment on the question "will a photosynth "offline" version be released ?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

fastolfe, you may get your wish :). What I meant by the above is that it benefits whoever uses it, but has no nonlinear multiplier ('network effect') in that for every user who does this, the benefit goes only to that user, not to the whole community. – Blaise Aguera y Arcas, on August 22, 2008 20:10

Blaise Aguera y Arcas set one of Blaise Aguera y Arcas' replies as an official response to "people can't view synth without installing" in Microsoft Live Labs

Blaise Aguera y Arcas replied on August 22, 2008 19:56 to the question "people can't view synth without installing" in Microsoft Live Labs:

Dale, unfortunately, without a plugin of some kind, the browser can't do anything even remotely like 3D viewing. Maybe in a few years that'll change :). We are very aware of the adoption barrier some may have to installing the binary (especially because it doesn't yet work on Mac), and are working on multiple fronts to improve this. However, don't expect anytime in the near future that a completely 'bare' browser will be able to view synths-- there's just no way to do convincing 3D with AJAX. Sorry!