National Geographic has a fun new feature called the Infinite Photograph that takes over 300,000 photos collected from its archives and submitted by users, and turns them into a giant photo mosaic. It lets you zoom in infinitely, making your way deeper into each photo as it breaks down into smaller photos of various colors.
The service is the latest effort to promote the company's MyShot program, which showcases user-uploaded photographs that appear both online and in the monthly publication.
Early Thursday I spoke with Rob Covey, who is National Geographic's senior vice president of content and design, about the project that he says is just the beginning of something much larger. "This is Version 1.0 of it. We've got a lot more work to do," he said. Covey said while this iteration is focused on a general selection of photos of Earth, future versions will break down into verticals like water, trees, and animals.
However, before it hits that point, Covey says there's some tweaking to be done in the back end, which was written entirely in-house and by one developer. As of right now, the application takes about a minute and a half to load in your browser--maybe a bit too long for some to wait. Future iterations will display higher quality pictures, and stream in faster from the get-go.
What's interesting here is that National Geographic is using the same editorial vetting for user-submitted photos as it does for its magazine, which means all of the shots you see are gorgeous. It's also harder to get your shot in, since it goes through a strict editorial review process. Covey says that there have been some 50,000 user-submitted images that have been contributed, and that the more they get into the system, the more advanced the application can get with its color sampling.
For those who want to get a similar experience with their own photos there's the Image Mosaic Generator, which will create a mosaic out of uploaded photos using shots from Flickr. However, it does not let you zoom in to see the full quality version of each shot, or have a neat Flash-based browser like National Geographic does.
There's something deeply satisfying about creating a video, and in the spirit of discovery, National Geographic Digital Media has announced Wildlife Filmmaker, an online video mashup to make you look like a wildlife documenter.
At first glance this is a nice-looking package for targeted video creation--all stylish black with bold accents in a Flash application. Putting together fun film clips is dead easy when you drag National Geographic's video footage of a variety of animals from the clips library to the corresponding clip bin on the storyboard. Repeat with sound snippets, music themes, and captions you author in the Web application's tab. Then click "play" and try to choke back the lump of pride you experience watching little Susie's--or your own--masterpiece.
It's a fun trifle, but from a Web application perspective, Wildlife Filmmaker is flimsy. Footage is limited, and there doesn't appear to be a way to import your own sounds, music, or video clips. Also absent is a way to preview the visual and audio media before dragging it to the storyboard. Once there, the clips lock into time slots graduated at every 5 seconds. The unfortunate result in my film was a caption that spilled over the crux of the clip. I should also note that I couldn't delete unwanted captions from the caption creation tab.... Read more
MySpace will soon launch more than a dozen branded video channels, featuring content from big names like the National Geographic group, The New York Times, and Reuters. Users will be able to access the video content on branded content microsites similar to YouTube's partner channels with the BBC, NBC, and CBS. MySpace is allowing content providers to customize their content interface, with special backgrounds and color schemes. Expect something similar to Trailer Park, which MySpace launched last month.
The new service will tie in to MySpace's current videos platform, although there's no word yet on whether or not members will be able to embed the new content on their profiles or on outside blogs and Web sites.
Also of interest, MySpace's "Daily Reel" channel. This editor-controlled channel hosts content that is deemed the best on the service. MySpace editors will add their own dialogue, and package it as a top five. From the press release, I can't tell if it's going to be like America's Funniest Home Videos, or Fox's Daily Show ripoff.
Maybe the most interesting news out of this morning's announcement is participation by Reuters and National Geographic. Both content providers are also sharing entire shows on Joost, which could signal overlap from other providers that are currently sharing their content on the competing service. Given the choice between viewing the content on a Web site and installing a program, many users are likely to go for MySpace's approach, or just stick with YouTube.
More on CNET's News.com story.
(Credit:
CNET Networks)
Flickr member Hamad Darwish is now a part of computing history, with two of his photographs included in Windows Vista. Usually Microsoft doesn't approach people with (we're assuming) large checks unless they're vying for a name or settling a lawsuit, but Darwish's work wowed Microsoft so much they hired him for a photo shoot.
Apparently there are three more images from Flickr users shipping with Vista, along with a few from Microsoft employees, too.
This is a cool use of services like Flickr. While Corbis, iStockPhoto, and Getty Images are all a hotbed for finding good wallpaper material, Flickr and other photo hosting services are a great place to find budding photographers who likely will be eager to have their work showcased and purchased.
[Found on Flickr blog]
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