Viewfinder: How to Seamlessly "Flickrize" Google Earth / a collaboration betw... April 15, 2008

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Google Tech Talks
April, 14 2008

ABSTRACT

"Viewfinder" is a novel method for users to spatially situate, or "find the pose," of their photographs, and then to view these photographs, along with others, as perfectly aligned overlays in a 3D world model such as Google Earth. Our objective is to provide a straightforward procedure for geo-locating photos of any kind, and our approach is to engage a community of users for a certain amount of human help. We specify that a 10-year-old should be able to find the pose of a photo in less than a minute, and we are convinced that this goal is achievable.

Our work to date, supported by a Google Research Award, was intended to be fast, lean, and focused on a single piece of a larger puzzle: posing and viewing arbitrary photos in pre-existing 3D models (not custom-recorded photos and not model building, though we hope our work will be useful in these areas). In addition to presenting Viewfinder specifics, the larger puzzle itself will be examined.

This talk will be taped.

Speaker: Michael Naimark
Michael Naimark, Viewfinder Project Director

Michael Naimark has made interactive "moviemaps" of Aspen from the street, Paris from the sidewalk, San Francisco from the air, Karlsruhe from the rail, Banff from hiking trails, and stereo-panoramic movies in Jerusalem, Dubrovnik, Angkor, and Timbuktu. His work is an unusual combination of optimism and activism, for example, it currently ranks #1 on Google searches for both VR webcams and camera zapper. Naimark received the World Technology Award for the Arts in 2002 and was the subject of a 20-year retrospective at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena in 2005. He currently serves on the Visiting Committee for the MIT Media Lab and on the faculty in the Interactive Media Division of the USC School for Cinematic Arts. For more information, please visit http://www.naimark.net .