Microsoft releases Photosynth

I saw this technology demonstrated several years ago by some research students from one of the more respected colleges (I think it was MIT but I can't remember). Microsoft must simply have purchased their work and published it.

I am only getting a message saying "Photosynth service is not available". 

Is it working for anyone else?

"XML Parsing Error: no element found
Location: http://photosynth.net/about.aspx
Line Number 1, Column 1:"

In response to this being borrowed, besides your wild speculation, did you ever consider that MS hired the people for whom you think this technology was "borrowed" from? That is more likely the case. In any case, it takes some time to get technology from a concept in a lab somewhere, to an actual commercial service.

Um, isn't there already a quality product out that does exactly what this "new" product from Microsoft says it will do? 

I've been using PT Gui and what Microsoft says that Photosynth will do is exactly what PT GUI has done for years. It's well beyond being a 1.0 piece of software.

For some reason this sounds like a free piece of software that MS will use to knock out a quality competitor that charges for its product... again.

First of all it's not wild speculation when I said that i'd seen the technology demonstrated years ago. Since I wasn't asleep at the time it can't have been speculation. Second, "borrowing" doesn't mean "stealing", yet you seem to have taken a great deal of offence to what I said, despite it being the truth. Are you by chance a Microsoft employee? If you were it would at least excuse your poor comprehension skills.

The point in saying that they may have borrowed the technology was that Microsoft doesn't innovate much for such a large and wealthy company. Purchasing other ideas and profiting from them is basically what a venture capitalist firm does. There's nothing wrong with that, and it isn't illegal, it's just rather unimpressive.

Is this was Apple/Linux/other fanboi favourite of the week it'd get positive comments...

MS "borrow" research technology? AFAIK it's a joint venture with MIT that MS are paying for. So what?

Obviously they should follow the proper geek model, ignore anything already existing and create a completely new version from scratch. MS don't reinvent wheel: big deal.

Next week: MS employee saves kitten from drowning - geeks still moan like the narrow minded idiots they obvious are.

This was demo'd at a TED conference about a year or more ago, http://www.ted.com/index.php

As far as I can make out PT Gui is a 2D tool for stitching images. Photosynth (effectively) figures out where each photo was taken from so that you can rotate, zoom, pan and even walk through a subject of a series of photos. It is pretty amazing software whoever developed it. 

This is about the only peice of MS software that has impressed me in that last 20 years.

Max is right, you are wrong..Hector? Do some research before tossing (key word) your loaded opinon about. They hired the original talent Blaise Aguera y Arcas and his seadragon project two years ago, I remember watching an early seadragon presentation myself. It has since grown into 2 dozen like minded souls. Even a glancing look at the projects front page would have told you most of that you that. 

Please readjust your tin foil hat and anti MS fud generator.


On another note, PT gui is an excellent panormic photstitcher however seadragon/photosyth is ALOT more than that, its like comparing a bicycle to the tardis and complaning that the tardis is unoriginal because its just another form of transport.

<really cynical alert>
Ok so they're loosing their power base in the OS and office.
The music industry is failing fast as people can now make music at home and sell/give it away over the inernet.
If people can make video at home - which you can with relative ease using free software - then if you can try and 'own' the model maker perhaps you can own the models and so own part of the video.
</really cynical alert>
Theres been nothing new in the science of computing for 20 years - apart from MS shenanigans.

See http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/autostitch/autostitch.html for the original research on this subject.