Blaise Aguera y Arcas's dashboard

A comment on the idea "Make the uploading opt-in" in Microsoft Live Labs:

The processing *is* actually being done locally! but I agree. – Blaise Aguera y Arcas, on August 22, 2008 19:45

A comment on the idea "Multiple user synths?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

Actually, we may already (almost) have this. Try pressing '.' (the period) to go forward in 'time', or ',' (comma) to go backward. It doesn't use the timestamp, but moves through images in filename order (and unless you renamed the images, cameras output photos in filename order = time order). Synths like the rock climbing synth on Aegialis (featured on the homepage) look great this way. – Blaise Aguera y Arcas, on August 22, 2008 19:38

Blaise Aguera y Arcas replied on August 22, 2008 18:41 to the idea "Multiple user synths?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

We love this idea too. There are many ways of getting this kind of collective effect from multiple users, ranging from just a shared bucket of photos synthed collectively to semi-automatic linking between similar synths. We certainly want to go there!

Blaise Aguera y Arcas replied on August 22, 2008 18:36 to the question "will a photosynth "offline" version be released ?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

stefmixo, I know others will have this request, especially in the professional space, where movie studios, contractors, etc. would like to use the computer vision parts of Photosynth to assist them with projects. We're thinking about it, but have no announced plans. That would be unlikely to be a free tool, since it has no beneficial network effects for the community. However, we are thinking hard about providing private or restricted synths on the web service, so that you don't need to share your personal stuff.

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

marciot, have you tried the 'play' button? It might be exactly what you're describing. – Blaise Aguera y Arcas, on August 22, 2008 07:17

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

We know this would be a great feature-- note that even now, if you do a synth of 50 photos, then decide to add another 50, making a new synth with all 100 (you kept those first 50 on your hard drive, right?) will be faster. Although the software does all the calculation from scratch, it at least figures out that the 1st 50 photos were already uploaded, and doesn't re-upload them. You can then delete your first synth with the 50 photos. – Blaise Aguera y Arcas, on August 22, 2008 00:17

Blaise Aguera y Arcas started following the idea "Photosynth.com is back online." in Microsoft Live Labs.

Blaise Aguera y Arcas replied on August 21, 2008 23:14 to the discussion "Is this a scam?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

Guys, we're working on making it crossplatform. But just so you know, one key reason that Photosynth combines software with services is that we're using the software to actually do the synthing-- this is much more scalable and environmentally friendly than doing it all on server farms. We want as many people as possible to be able to view and create synths, but making the software element crossplatform is a lot harder than making an ordinary website crossplatform! Of course smooth 3D graphics is also not something that web browsers do well without a bit of help.

Blaise Aguera y Arcas replied on August 21, 2008 23:06 to the question "Why not just take a video?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

The replies are spot on. Keep in mind that even a $100 camera can get a beautiful 8 megapixels, which makes even HD look terrible (not to mention that if you downsample a video to web size, you're in the sub-megapixel range). And of course even more importantly, the ability to navigate nonlinearly in space instead of just moving a slider. Synths can let you experience an event in time, as for the rock climbing synths, and video can indeed give you a tour of a space, but video and synths are really very different media!

Blaise Aguera y Arcas replied on August 21, 2008 23:00 to the question "When will a Mac version of Photosynth be available?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

Eric, you're not the only one eager to see good crossplatform support!

Blaise Aguera y Arcas replied on August 21, 2008 22:55 to the discussion "Can Photosynth integrate aerial photographs from kites with role, yaw and different elevations?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

I'd love to see you try this!

Blaise Aguera y Arcas replied on August 21, 2008 22:50 to the question "What about U.S. Copyright laws and privacy?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

We made a very conscious choice in Photosynth to *not* crawl the web for photos, but instead to encourage people to share photos with the world explicitly to synth and build a community around this. We also offer a range of rights options, from copyright to Creative Commons to public domain. I'd strongly recommend Creative Commons, myself :).

Blaise Aguera y Arcas replied on August 21, 2008 15:39 to the idea "Full Screen Mode ...ala Piclens" in Microsoft Live Labs:

I strongly agree! Not only is real fullscreen nicer-- it's also very important when the control is embedded, and the JavaScript on the webpage isn't set up to 'cooperate' with the fullscreen signal. It's on the feature backlog, and I hope we get to it soon!

Blaise Aguera y Arcas started following the idea "Full Screen Mode ...ala Piclens" in Microsoft Live Labs.

Blaise Aguera y Arcas started following the idea "Buddy lists" in Microsoft Live Labs.

Blaise Aguera y Arcas set one of Blaise Aguera y Arcas' replies as an official response to "Does the order in which I upload my pictures matter?" in Microsoft Live Labs

Blaise Aguera y Arcas replied on August 14, 2008 06:09 to the question "Does the order in which I upload my pictures matter?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

Great question!-- in our early internal builds, there were some random effects from photo order (which was actually not fully controllable), but for the build we're releasing the order in which you add things doesn't matter. The image filenames are always sorted lexicographically (meaning as they'd be if you click by name on the file explorer). That order is assumed to be the 'time' or narrative order. If the photos came from a single camera, they generally will be, since cameras give photos names with increasing numbers in them that sort as you'd expect. In the viewer, you can use the period (',') and comma (',') to move respectively forward and backward through photos in their time order. This is good for action sequences, It's not the same as the spacebar, which moves you through a spatial tour, and 'z', which moves you to previous images you've visited kind of like 'undo'.

Blaise Aguera y Arcas replied on May 18, 2008 22:01 to the discussion "What features should we add to Photosynth?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

When we ship, we should put some of our backlog items up here!