Many readers will be aware that the annual TED conference was held a couple of weeks ago in California.
TED organisers are notorious for staggering the release of conference presentation videos over weeks and even months. However, one of the first presentations to emerge from TED2010 was this show-stopper from the architect at the helm of Microsoft’s digital cartographic efforts.
Blaise Aguera y Arcas is the creator of Seadragon, a visualisation technology that was acquired by Microsoft in 2006 and forms the basis for Microsoft’s Photosynth. His 2007 TED talk on Photosynth is one of the all-time most popular in the TED archive, so anticipation was high in the lead-up to his TED2010 address.
Aguera y Arcas didn’t disappoint with this overview of how he and his team are incorporating augmented reality into Photosynth and Bing Maps. Check out the gasp he draws from the audience when he zooms from an aerial view of Seattle to photo-realistic street view.
Watch out, Google!
