Photosynth creator walks us through Bing Maps, gives us a taste of augmented reality's future (video)
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted February 16th 2010 12:58AM
posted February 16th 2010 12:58AM
We were pretty stoked when we heard all about the new toys that Microsoft was adding to Bing Maps (Street View-esque navigation, Photosynth integration, crowd sourcing content, so on and so forth), and it looks like things are really coming together nicely. If you hop on past the break, we've thoughtfully embedded Blaise Aguera y Arcas' TED Talk where the Microsoft Live Labs architect and co-creator of Photosynth gives a sweet overview of the project as the foundation for a pretty robust augmented reality setup. The crowd gasps, applauds, and speaks in tongues repeatedly throughout the eight minute talk -- which is really what you'd expect from the Glenn Beck crowd, not the head of the technology, entertainment, and design fraternity (at least those who attend conferences). But don't take our word for it! Check it out and tell us what you think.
It's awesome! A great contender to Google Maps.
@msunardi I prefer Mapquest
@cswright haha you're awesome
@ginubrian google maps is the best!
@cswright These new features BLOWS google maps out of the sky
@abedinthehouse
true that!
Double true!
you all need to bone up on your SNL 'lazy sunday'
@msunardi Indeed Yes, Bing maps is so smooth, it made google maps AJAX scrolling look a bit 'rough'.. and the Bing Maps "StreetSide" feature is really incredible which as at par with google's streetview.. All the features: http://bit.ly/bing-maps-official-features
The only caveat though, is you need to install silverlight..
@abedinthehouse
yeah take googles idea and add one more feature, and it makes theres better right? makes theirs original and unique sounds like Microsoft's whole companies ethic.
@Zeroexe43
Google didn't create Google Earth, they bought it from Keyhole and started tacking on features.
@msunardi
Has anyone noticed that Bing Maps is running incredibly slow lately?
@abedinthehouse how long until that backpacker walks every market in the US? Nice features but seem limited to big cities and tourist traps.
@Zeroexe43 ONE idea?
a: it's FAR smoother than Google maps or Google Earth
b: integration of Snapdragon means far smoother and far deeper zooming than Google Maps - right down to INSIDE?
c: oh wait - INSIDE - a place Google doesn't go
d: overlay video? Not something Google does
e: integrate publicly available crowd-sourced pics? Google doesn't do.
Shall I continue? Smoother, plus places Google doesn't go and doing things Google doesn't do. . . yeah, a lame copy of Google Maps. . .
lol mapquest hahaaha
wowzer, this came out of nowhere..
Mindblowing!
Loving the picture of Pikes Place Market... reminds me of home.
It's amazing how easy it's becoming to obtain information these days.
@bigmattown
Alot of it is already out there just waiting for the data-mining to bring it all into one location. Imagine how many people are out there with camera and video enabled devices to get data from.
It's like Google getting real time traffic from phones to generate traffic data.
omg WOW!!! This stuff is amazing! Deserving of the standing ovation. Cant wait for it to hit Bing.
Sweet as all holy hell, but Google does already do a lot of this. Nevertheless, competition improves the breed. =)
Just realized, this will be making it easier to spy on people now....hmmm. Violation of our rights perhaps??? or at least a possibility of it becoming a violation?
@abedinthehouse How's that? The photo's are taken in public, there's no law saying you can't take them.
@barry99705 your right, its not. but if you can tap into say, live videos...then whats to say the government cant either?
this is so cool
woooowww
Only whole picture perspective correction, not so impressive. Not the Matrix type 360 degree object mapping.
No commentors care to add to the key issue to this, being it requires Silverlight? Why is MS going through so much trouble to push propritary software onto our standardized web browsers?
@Colrath
Because there is no other way to make this work?
@Colrath : Err, in fairness, Google Street View demands Adobe Flash which is a horrible, prickly, proprietary mess.
At least Silverlight has a fully supported FOSS alternative. (Moonlight).
@Colrath
wow yeah ive never seen any other company push proprietary crap before.... and its needed to work. silverlight is fairly unobtrusive
@Colrath
Like Flash is not propritary.
I do not understand all the fuss with installing Silverlight. Its only 5 MB download that you have to install once just like Flash.
@Colrath
It's not 'pushed' on you. Don't use these new features if you don't want Silverlight.
@anunay The problem is, that Silverlight or Flash are not necessary.
@Colrath
I do hope that Google gets around to updating their streetview so that it doesn't require flash. It shouldn't be too hard using HTML5 and canvas.
I wouldn't expect Microsoft to ever use anything other than their own proprietary crap.
wtf lol, its something new, and people just cant accept it that microsoft has done it, its pwning the scene with the 7 phone and now this... who knows whats next ?
@AdvancedN0ob
My dad is getting a new pacemaker and it runs Microsoft "Beat" V. 1.0. (I'm a little worried about the '1.0' part).
Google Maps/Earth better step it up a notch, that's very impressive.
Google still dominates every part of Bing.
@mtnDewFTW
This may be so, but MS is making a hard push against Google at this point. I found myself not too long ago wondering when Google would just outright buy them, but if Microsoft can continue innovating like this then then only thing it does is give the consumer a choice. That is never a bad thing.
Love you Google but look out for this. It's on FIRE!
Big brother is watching you
That's some CSI shit right there.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go create a GUI interface using Visual Basic to see if I can track an IP address.
To be honest, when I heard "augmented reality Bing Maps" I thought it was something along the lines of taking a photo and Bing knowing where you are from the photo or displaying a live hud of information over the video feed of buildings/streets you are pointing at.
I've seen demonstrations of this kind of technology before -- bringing together images from the cloud through services such as flickr and combining them into a sort of meshwork 3d panorama -- but it's incredibly exciting that this technology will finally become available to millions of everyday browsers!
What I really don't get is how MSFT had stuff like this, WinMo7, etc., and didn't mention ANY of it at their CES keynote.
Along with a deeper look at slates, they could've rocked that whole event.
@KashifPasta Much better to spread it around and tease us here and there ;)
Seattle FTW!
photosynth is going to be one of the greatest technological advances of our time once they get it rolling. great demo here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-DqZ8jAmv0
Uhm, how is this a taste of Augmented Reality? Seems to me we're still busy augmenting our virtual environment with snippets from reality. It's supposed to be the other way around, no?
@hellodeibu Put this on your WP7-phone and you have it the other way around ;)
The future is going to be so AWESOME!