To really give you an idea of what it was like to attend President Obama’s Inaugural Address with more than a million other people, David Bergman used the GigaPan EPIC to capture 220 images with his Canon G10, and then stitch them together into a final image that’s more than 1,474-Megapixels big!
The final size is 59,783 x 24,658 pixels, and it takes up almost two gigs of data, but if you go to the Gigapan site, you can click and zoom around within the image to view all of the amazing details that were captured by David. People have even gone through and annotated interesting things to see, so you can just click on what looks good and let the software fly and zoom you into place automatically.
Microsoft has been testing their Photosynth software for some time now, but with so many people snapping away with their cameras during the Inauguration, now’s probably the perfect time to see what getting ‘synthy’ is all about.
The goal of Photosynth is to take a bunch of photos and create an experience that has the cinematic quality of a movie, the control of a video game, and the mind-blowing detail of the real world. Photosynth was the result of two independent breakthroughs: The ability to reconstruct a scene or object from a bunch of flat photographs, and the technology to bring that experience to virtually anyone over the Internet:
It works by examining images for similarities to each other and using that information to estimate the shape of the subject and the vantage point each photo was taken from. With this information, Photosynth then recreates the space and uses it as a canvas to display and navigate through the photos. Here’s a little video on the history and inspiration behind Photosynth:
It’s probably one of those ‘see it to believe it’ technologies, so head on over to Photosynth’s special Inauguration page and check out the different Synths that were created during the event.
From December 4 through December 7, Gizmodo took over a small space in NYC and created the Gizmodo Gallery to showcase “the best of Gizmodo come to life”.
If you missed out on attending in person, but still want to see what the Gallery was all about, then be sure to check out the fantastic “ultra-high definition virtual reality panorama” that German photographer Joergen Geerds created for them. You can zoom in and out using only the mouse, and the level of detail is staggering. We’re talking the ability to zoom in and read the titles of DVD type quality here. (For the best experience, make sure to right-click and view in Fullscreen mode too.)
When Microsoft released the Zune, they had plenty of time to learn from Apple’s mistakes and eat the iPod’s lunch by designing a superior product that fixed any of the iPod’s faults; right?
Apparently not, as Crave’s Molly Wood shows (in great detail) with the five reasons her Zune is dead to her.
From poor software and music categorization to tangled headphones, worthless wireless, and the unforgivable “erase all of her server-stored music” feature, it’s a must read for anyone that’s thinking of breaking rank and going with the ‘soft’s player.
Twitter’s popularity just continues to grow, but if you haven’t yet jumped on the bandwagon, then check out Lost Art Of Blogging’s guide, “Twitter: Why It’s So Great And How To Effectively Use It”.
Basically a primer for everything you could want to know about the service, it covers Why You Should Use Twitter, Using Twitter [...]
The Supercar Movies Lamborghini LP640 film is an amazing piece of automotive nirvana.
Every angle is highlighted, every curve is accentuated, every sound is emphasized, and every pixel is optimized.
And, since it’s available in HD, you won’t miss a single detail.
(Seriously though, for fans of the four-wheel machine, this is a must see.)
[Supercar Movies]
