Tech-talk comments

• Muhanad’s presentation on del.icio.us: It was very informative, I stumbled upon “delicious” in the past, but did not really pay much interest to it, but the presentation made me interested in it.

• Nichel’s presentation on flickr: The ability to share pictures with friends, and family, that flicker offers is very convenient.

• Amy’s presentation on ebay: I never knew about the additional resources that ebay offers, it allows for much greater collaboration/communication than I thought.

• Anthony’s presentation on youtube: I guess youtube is one of those sites everyone of us visited at least once before, but never really thought about how much of a marketing resource it is.

• Johnny’s presentation on V.O.I.P.: The presentation was very informative, since I never really used the voip services in the past.

• Melissa’s presentation on gnu.org: I have used a lot of open source software/OS in the past, and I enjoyed the presentation a lot, since I do believe that open source is the way to go when it comes to being creative, as well as being able to contribute to the “evolution” of technology.
• Sarah’s presentation on watching TV on the web: It was very informative; I always enjoy learning new bits of tech info, especially when it comes to entertainment.

• Tiesha’s presentation on Music Media: I enjoyed it a lot, since to be honest I really got out of the loop when it comes to any music related technology. The CD/vinyl product was really an interesting “mash up” of the old and new.

• Anastasia’s presentation on Second Life: Finally one presentation relating to the gaming media , I never really plaid this game, although I read a bit of info about it. I enjoyed the info on how the game is being used not only for leisure, but also for collaboration, and commerce.

• Sutharshan’s presentation on HowStuffWorks: I used to visit similar sites, but never visited this one, very interesting content can be found on that site. Great resource for research, or just on ….how stuff works ;).

• Damon’s presentation on bittorrent: Torrent technology is an interesting one, even more so the use of it in commerce. It is a topic of much controversy.

• Vincent’s presentation on Wikipedia: Very informative presentation, the coding section will definitively be helpful in creating our Wiki.

• Sergey’s presentation on MapQuest: Very informative. I did not know that MapQuest had such advanced features. Its one of those technologies that can really help people not only when it comes to navigation.

Photosynth

What is photosynth? Photosynth is a new technology developed by Microsoft Labs, initiated at the University of Washington as a photo-tourism application. It takes a large collection of photos of a place, or an object and analyzes them for similarities, and displays them in a reconstructed 3D form. Personally I believe that PhotoSynth will change teh way we percieve photography, as flicker, and photobucket were revolutionary in their times, PhotoSynth will be soon. The software is powered by SeaDragon, and it allows for seamless transitions between pictures, and zooming in and out, which allows the viewer to see where a picture was taken, in relation to other pictures. Each photo is processed by computer "vision algorithms" to extract hundreds of distinctive features, the photos that do share similar features are linked to one another, as a result the 3D position can be calculated, and the photo will be assigned a place in he 3D location. One of the major strengths of photosynth is its speed, it allows the viewer to brows collections of many thousands of high definition photos, as if it would be one image. The only restraint is the bandwidth, as well as the user screen size. During the presentation I would like to use power point slides, as well use a tech demo of photosynth provided by the Microsoft Live Labs, in order to provide a more enjoyable experience to the viewers. . The tech demo can be fuond here. A demonstration of SeaDragon, and PhotoSynth video: