Photosynth

Recently Microsoft Labs introduced a new technology called "Photosynth" where in they can construct a three dimensional virtual view of a place using the discrete photos taken for that place. Like say people visiting Taj Mahal might take various photos, now this tool can crawl the public images of Taj Mahal and construct a virtual tour of Taj Mahal using those picture, its interesting how it can wire various pictures to give a three dimensional view.

Aside Taj Mahal there are lot of other interesting places listed out, you would need a plug in to view, here is the link:

http://photosynth.net/default.aspx


Venkat Reddy

Largest Theatrical performance

I was referring to Beijing Olympics opening ceremony. The thing that caught my awe is the sheer scale of performance, its not just the $300 million budget but the precision and co-ordination of 15,000 performances is just amazing.

Here are some pictures:
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/08/2008_olympics_opening_ceremony.html

For a video:
http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/player.html?assetid=0808_hd_ocb_hl_en197

For Americans this might be a little intimidating and a glimpse of whats coming next.


Venkat Reddy

Nanook of the North

"Nanook of the North" is a documentary film shot in 1922 portraying the life of a Eskimo family in the upper regions of Canada. If you are interested in the lives of Natives I would recommend watching this movie. Its just amazing how they could survive for thousands of years in such a harsh Arctic weather, with no vegetation, sparse animals to hunt and practically no tools at their disposal. The irony is that they are the most happiest. In this age it would be almost impossible to capture the pristine lives of such Natives, being shot in early 1900's it was possible to find such natives who weren't exposed to modern world yet..

Venkat Reddy