Over the last couple of days Google has been hosting the “Hangout In Real Life” Google+ Photographers Conference in San Francisco, and if anything has come out of the conference at all, it’s that Google is intent on making Google+ the photo sharing service of the future.
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Google’s Project Glass has been all the rage since the company released their mock-ups and video of the project at the beginning of the month, and for good reason — the idea is out-of-this-world cool. But from the start we’ve known that Project Glass was only in the beginning stages, the glasses were an idea that couldn’t yet do many, if any, of the things featured in that futuristic video. A couple of days ago, however, the world got its first glimpse of what Project Glass can do.
In an interview with Charlie Rose, researcher Sebastian Thrun used the glasses and his voice to snap a photo of Mr. Rose and upload it to his Google+. The photo (shown above) is nothing special — it looks like an ancient camera phone image — but it serves as confirmation that the glasses can already perform a few basic functions via voice command. And considering the speed with which technology advances these days, any indication of functionality could mean Project Glass is much further along than we think.
(via Gizmodo)
If you’ve been following us for a while you may remember the Hope poster lawsuit we reported on in January of 2010. The case pitted artist Shepard Fairey against the AP and Mannie Garcia over a photograph Garcia had taken of President Obama. Fairey, who ultimately lost the case when he admitted to having destroyed and falsified evidence, was claiming that his poster fit the definition of fair use.
Today we have a similar issue of photographs that have been altered artistically, only the players have changed to music photographer Jim Marshall’s Estate vs. Thierry Guetta (Mr. Brainwash) and Google.
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Google Maps is great for a many reasons that extend far beyond helping you get from point “A” to point “B” — and their newest feature is especially interesting. Dubbed “photo tours,” the new Google Maps feature allows users to take 3D tours of 15,000 different, well-known landmarks; all of which are highlighted when you follow a special link from Google.
In order to create the experience you see demoed in the above video, Google goes through a complicated process of compiling sourced photos from Picasa and Panoramio, finding overlapping photos, generating a 3D rendering based on those photos and then choosing a path through the landmark. We’re sure it’s even more complicated than it sounds, but the results speak for themselves.
(via Google LatLong Blog via The Verge)
Innovation is why we love companies like Google. Several times a week, it seems, the company comes out with another program or product idea that makes us all smile (and secretly wonder how long we have until they’ve achieved world domination). Their best ideas, however, involve their user base — and their latest expansion idea for Google Earth does just that. Read more…
This past Saturday marked the centennial of French photographer Robert Doisneau, and Google celebrated with a creative photo doodle on its home page. Doisneau is considered one of the fathers of photojournalism and street photography, alongside fellow French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson.
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Google recently brought its Street View camera inside the White House for the Google Art Project’s documentation of the artwork found within. In addition to displaying the art itself, the website also features a Street View-style museum view of the White House, allowing you to walk around inside virtually. Earlier this year Google did the same thing for photography mecca B&H Photo Video in NYC.
If Google’s vision of the future pans out, we may soon be snapping and sharing photographs using augmented reality “glasses”. The company is working on a product that’s currently going by the code name “Project Glass“. As the concept video above shows, the aim is to have a wearable “computer” that can project useful information about the world directly into the user’s eye, allowing people to constantly interact with the Internet throughout their everyday lives. The glasses would even be able to snap photographs based on voice commands, and then instantly upload them to the web.
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The private photographs on your phone might not be as private as you think. Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that iOS has a loophole that allows third-party apps who have access to location information to also access (and copy) your entire photo library without any further notification or warning. A couple days later, Android was also found to have a loophole that’s even worse — any app that can access the Internet can copy photos to a remote server! Both companies have acknowledged the privacy flaws and are currently working on fixes for them. Welcome to the scary world of Internet-connected cameras!
Image credit: iPhone Camera by Nico Kaiser
New service called the Catlin SeaView Survey is planning to do for the ocean what Google Street View has done for land. Using a special camera, the joint venture between the University of Queensland, Google, and insurance firm Catlin Group will use a specially designed underwater camera to capture interactive 360-degree panoramic photographs. The purpose will be to carry out one of the most intensive studies of reefs ever, starting with Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. It’ll go into full swing starting in September, but some sample imagery is already viewable over at the SeaView website.
