The Future of Image networking

I just watched the most amazing video of a new product called Photosynth from Microsoft. This post may be a little more technical than most of my posts here, but I was so blown away by the possibilities of a system like this, that I had to post about it. In the video a Microsoft Live Labs Architect, Blaise Aguera y Arcas gives a demonstration of Photosynth.
The Photosynth application uses algorithms to interpret, categorize image data and create links between related images and other data from anywhere on the net. Basically it's building a "Visual Web" on top of the existing Internet.



For the original source of the video above go to TED: Talks Blaise Aguera y Arcas: Jaw-dropping Photosynth demo

3D chalk drawings

I discovered this amazing artist, Julian Beever, who does 3d sidewalk paintings in chalk. His pictures look so real that you almost believe they are real. The coolest thing is that since the images are meant to appear in 3d, they are actually painted in a distorted way. So when looking at them from the side or the back they are completely distorted a strange looking, but when looking at them from the front they come out in full 3d. The picture above is just one of many on his site. Check it out to see some truly amazing images.

The artists site: Julian Beever's pavement drawings