Photosynth is… eh

Earlier this week, David Pogue from the New York Times reported on the “official” launch of Microsoft’s Photosynth app. This is not exactly news—lead developer Blaise Aguera y Arcas demo’d an early version last March at the TED conference, and beta versions have been available on Microsoft’s Live Lab site for months.

The new dedicated Photosyth website (www.photosynth.com) allows Windows-users to upload and “synth” their photos online, and then share with others. Photoscapes are rated by their coverage, so National Geographic’s 3D panorama of the Taj Mahal is “100% synthy” while Vaporetto’s vista of the Grand Canal is only “83% synthy.” After browsing the site for a few minutes, I felt a permanent lisp coming on.

Plus, since there’s still no love for Macs (17 months after TED, guys) I can’t actually do anything on the site, so I’ll have to leave the critique to Pogue:

Microsoft has designed Photosynth to be less a virtual-reality tool than a glorified slideshow, a clever way to arrange a bunch of discrete photos in space. That’s fine, but it does make photosynths less magical than they could be. Compare Photosynth’s one-photo-at-a-time focus with, say, the seamless views of a QuickTime VR scene (Google “QuickTime VR gallery” to see some), where everything is in focus as you look up, down, left, right, forward or back, as if you’re inside a giant wraparound photo.

Even so, Photosynth is wicked cool, and it will find all kinds of new uses. At the very least, it represents another milestone in the evolution of place-description technologies. Until someone comes up with brain-to-brain image sharing, that will have to do.

Read the full review here.

The geopolitics of Pop vs. Soda

Obama supporters clearly drink “soda.”

via Strange Maps (btw, interesting to note that this is the single-most submitted map to the Strange Maps blog, sent in by over 100 contributors. Guess people really love their pop.)

Uncoordinated: Mapping Cartography in Contemporary Art

I wish I were passing through Cincinnati this week to catch the tail end of the exhibit, “Uncoordinated: Mapping Cartography in Contemporary Art” at the Contemporary Arts Center. Here’s a description from their Web site:

Maps have a remarkable effect on our view of the world. At the root of their power is our frequently unquestioning acceptance of cartographic messages. Though we equate maps with truth, it is crucial to be conscious of the omissions and limitations of the map making process in order to create a readable map. Thus in turn, maps and their makers have the ability to manipulate their audience with the information chosen to include.

This exhibition addresses the subjective nature of mapping, how we locate ourselves in consideration of changing boundaries and territories, and how we give visual form to boundaries, territories and land masses.

One of the artists featured is Noriko Ambe, who does amazing things with books. The show is on view through August 17.

Space Debris Visualizations

Since 1986 the European Space Agency has been tracking the amount of space junk orbiting the Earth. As part of this ongoing study, the ESA created a catalog of images to document and illustrate the debris field both in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and further out in Geostationary Orbit (GEO), and they’ve recently posted new pictures online. The images look straight out of WALL-E. We’ve all heard that there was a lot of crap in space, but this is insane.

Between the launch of Sputnik on 4 October 1957 and 1 January 2008, approximately 4600 launches have placed some 6000 satellites into orbit, of which about 400 are travelling beyond geostationary orbit or on interplanetary trajectories.

Today, it is estimated that only 800 satellites are operational – roughly 45 percent of these are both in LEO and GEO. Space debris comprise the ever-increasing amount of inactive space hardware in orbit around the Earth as well as fragments of spacecraft that have broken up, exploded or otherwise become abandoned. About 50 percent of all trackable objects are due to in-orbit explosion events (about 200) or collision events (less than 10).

More on Gizmodo.

National Map Corps no longer?

Most people believe that with all the satellite and GPS technology at our disposal, maps are getting better. But in reality, world mapping programs have been in steady decline for decades, and never existed in many countries (as Michael Goodchild has argued here). Open-source, grassroots projects like OpenStreetMap have aimed to remedy this by crowd-sourcing locational data (sending parties of amateur cartographers out on bikes with GPS is the most popular method), and recently Google launched its own version of this concept with “Mapmaker,” which allows individuals to edit and add to existing maps (though Google retains proprietary ownership of all data input, natch).

Anyway, long story short, the email below, which was posted on the Geowanking listserv, signals another nail in the coffin for federally-sponsored mapping programs, and underscores the shift towards enterprise mapping as the model for the acquisition and validation of geographic data—and the potential profit therein (hence Nokia’s $8.1 billion acquisition of Navteq…).

A map is never an objective representation of the physical world (just look at China’s borders today, or the British Empire a hundred years ago), so the implications of how this might manifest in the long-term are really fascinating. At what point do we begin to see a corporate vs. nationalist bias embedded in the basemap?

———————
From: Morgan J Bearden
Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2008 6:46 AM
Subject: USGS – The National Map Corps Update

July 10, 2008

Dear National Map Corps Volunteer,

Due to budgetary considerations The National Map Corps volunteer program is being evaluated by a USGS committee to determine the program’s future and how it may better serve the needs of The National Map. During the evaluation period, processing of submitted data will be suspended due to the demands on USGS personnel.

Consequently, we are asking all National Map Corps volunteers who are presently collecting data using a global positioning system (GPS) receiver to stop collecting structure data and send collected data to the USGS by August 10, 2008.

Although we are asking you to stop collecting structure data using your GPS receiver, we encourage you to continue your volunteer activity by using our prototype web-based collection procedure. You may visit the web-based collection site at http://ims.er.usgs.gov/vfs/faces/index.jspx. You will be asked to fill out a brief registration form and you may then collect structure data after you have familiarized yourself with the navigation and collection tools.

We appreciate your support over the past several years as the volunteer program evolved and grew. Since its inception the Earth Science Corps and The National Map Corps volunteers have contributed to the graphic mapping program and to building The National Map structures data theme. We hope that the current program assessment results in a renewed volunteer program supported by our current and many future volunteers.

Please refer to the web-based collection site for updates. You may also communicate with one another via the National Map forum at geocaching.com.
Best wishes in your future endeavors.

Thank you for your past service to the U.S. Geological Survey. We look forward to working with you in the future.

Sincerely,

Morgan J Bearden, Coordinator
The National Map Corps
U. S. Geological Survey
National Geospatial Technical Operations Center