I discovered Microsoft Photosynth this past week. If you have not tried out the demo, you really should. Basically the program takes a bunch of pictures of the same place and finds the similarities between them to construct a 3D space. You can zoom in on individual pictures or fly around the 3D environment. I was very impressed. In the Virtual Earth blog they had an entry about CSI using the program, it has a YouTube of the show.
It is a very cool concept, and it could easily be taken further. Like for example using standard video fotage of a scene to create the 3D space. How about combining various sources of data to create a hybrid source of data? 2 or 3 security cameras, motion sensors, RFID, to construct a full 3D scene in full motion. Of course their would need to be some way to syncronize the time of each individual source of data for it to be used. The video should be able to use recognition techniques to find a moving object common to all sources and capture it passing a fixed reference point (also in all sources) and thus syncronize it roughly as the object passes the same reference point.
A scene in full motion 3D would be invaluable in solving crimes and traffic accidents. It shouldn't be long before most cars will come equiped to store video and other stats that are more readily available (of course there are obvious privacy issues). But, the ability to construct a full motion 3D scene of a traffic accident would save investigators countless hours, as well as giving valuable information to car manufactures to help avoid crashes.
Heck if we want to take it to the extreme, you could have a service that people could opt into to provide all video from their vehicle and it would be processed for poor drivers. The vehicles of the poor drivers would get marked in the system based on the make, model, color and ultimately the license plate. If your vehicle camera spots one of the marked vehicles it could let you know (maybe that is paranoid, but maybe there is something there). The service could be tied to other GPS/navigation information like traffic (real time, other vehicles in the service could all be bouncing back and forth data to let all the users what the conditions are). Ok, I realize this is getting very 1984ish. So, I'll stop.
Friday, May 9, 2008
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Who own's reviews?
I am sick of reviews being spread all over the web. Some websites have started to aggregate reviews from all over, but this is just the beginning. It must be more than this. One example is Google offering reviews when you do a search on Google Maps for businesses. They have reviews from Yahoo!, Yelp and etc. These reviews are mostly for restaurants and bars, but other businesses have some reviews too.
I think the worst are product reviews such as appliances and niches not covered well by the likes of Amazon. If I search for the model number of the dishwasher I want to buy I usually get no reviews, similar dishwashers have reviews, but how "similar" are they? Are the main components the exact same? Does that translate into the same performance?
So who actually owns the reviews? The website someone put them into, probably technically. But, why would someone put out a review unless they want to share it with others? Wouldn't they want the biggest possible audience to see it. They should be in the Public Domain, they should not be privately possessed unless the review or comments are collected by or for the actual company being reviewed.
I would like to see Reviews made into a open source set of data. That way people searching could get a much bigger return on their search. By having them in a standard format everybody could access them. You could do mashups like you can with Google Maps. Make them part of a type of open source wiki of reviews.
I think I am dissuaded at times to leave reviews, because I don't know where to leave them. I usually search for reviews on multiple sites, so which of those should I leave the review on? All of them? Its confusing and frustrating, if there was a way I knew most people searching for a review could find it I would do it that way. So maybe like a wikipedia of reveiws.
It also could be part of an open id so that in someones profile are all the reviews that person has ever written. Those reviews would be "hosted" by the person who wrote them or Google or someone else could facilitate hosting people's review profiles. That way a search would turn up all relevant reviews (as long as criteria for how reviews are setup are followed).
I think the worst are product reviews such as appliances and niches not covered well by the likes of Amazon. If I search for the model number of the dishwasher I want to buy I usually get no reviews, similar dishwashers have reviews, but how "similar" are they? Are the main components the exact same? Does that translate into the same performance?
So who actually owns the reviews? The website someone put them into, probably technically. But, why would someone put out a review unless they want to share it with others? Wouldn't they want the biggest possible audience to see it. They should be in the Public Domain, they should not be privately possessed unless the review or comments are collected by or for the actual company being reviewed.
I would like to see Reviews made into a open source set of data. That way people searching could get a much bigger return on their search. By having them in a standard format everybody could access them. You could do mashups like you can with Google Maps. Make them part of a type of open source wiki of reviews.
I think I am dissuaded at times to leave reviews, because I don't know where to leave them. I usually search for reviews on multiple sites, so which of those should I leave the review on? All of them? Its confusing and frustrating, if there was a way I knew most people searching for a review could find it I would do it that way. So maybe like a wikipedia of reveiws.
It also could be part of an open id so that in someones profile are all the reviews that person has ever written. Those reviews would be "hosted" by the person who wrote them or Google or someone else could facilitate hosting people's review profiles. That way a search would turn up all relevant reviews (as long as criteria for how reviews are setup are followed).
Friday, February 22, 2008
A fragmented world...
I have been following Mike Dobson of TeleMapics Exploring Local blog as he has been delving into User Generated Content. His latest installment UGC, Map Updating and Market Segmentation gives a good lie of the land as far as Map/GIS data go (as well as business listings goes, i.e. Yellow Books...).
The picture you get is of a fragmented market so many companies are trying to the same thing. I liken it to the way governments have been creating/updating GIS data. I have seen many examples of how cities, counties and states all try to maintain the same datasets independently.
What a waste of time and money! The use of map data from governements was not even mentioned in his blog, but in all actuality the county or city's data is probably much more complete and accurate. It also gets updated as soon as a new road goes in, that can take Navteq and TeleAtlas years sometimes to get added. I know that there are tons of issues surrounding selling/providing government data to private companies, but TIGER data is usually what all of Navteq and TeleAtlas data started out as (some rural areas are still that).
The other point I wanted to bring up was the fact that the ideal solution would be an Open Source map (several examples of this exist i.e. Open Street Map). This Open Source map is where companies/governments should be providing updates to. Then everybody can benefit. I know that is only a dream, but I foresee some type of this happening in the future. For now, why can't Personal Navigation devices (Car Nav Systems, Handheld GPS, Mobile Phone Navigation) provide the User Generated content that they have received to open source maps, so volunteers in open source can correct information. The passive content that those PND devices collect (GPS stream of how all travel) would also be a tremendous help to an open source project.
The picture you get is of a fragmented market so many companies are trying to the same thing. I liken it to the way governments have been creating/updating GIS data. I have seen many examples of how cities, counties and states all try to maintain the same datasets independently.
What a waste of time and money! The use of map data from governements was not even mentioned in his blog, but in all actuality the county or city's data is probably much more complete and accurate. It also gets updated as soon as a new road goes in, that can take Navteq and TeleAtlas years sometimes to get added. I know that there are tons of issues surrounding selling/providing government data to private companies, but TIGER data is usually what all of Navteq and TeleAtlas data started out as (some rural areas are still that).
The other point I wanted to bring up was the fact that the ideal solution would be an Open Source map (several examples of this exist i.e. Open Street Map). This Open Source map is where companies/governments should be providing updates to. Then everybody can benefit. I know that is only a dream, but I foresee some type of this happening in the future. For now, why can't Personal Navigation devices (Car Nav Systems, Handheld GPS, Mobile Phone Navigation) provide the User Generated content that they have received to open source maps, so volunteers in open source can correct information. The passive content that those PND devices collect (GPS stream of how all travel) would also be a tremendous help to an open source project.
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