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There are 6 new posts in "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India" Microsoft Photosynth : Mind BlowingMicrosoft announced its Photosynth project long back. A lot of people had seen it already. Even I had blogged about it a year back. Two days back, Microsoft released the Photosynth for the general public. The project is now out of the beta. What is Photosynth? Well, here is how Microsoft describes Photosynth - “You can share or relive a vacation destination or explore a distant museum or landmark. With a nothing more than digital camera and some inspiration, you can use Photosynth to transform regular digital photos into a three-dimensional, 360-degree experience. Anybody who sees your synth is put right in your shoes, sharing in your experience, with detail, clarity and scope impossible to achieve in conventional photos or videos. Synths constitute an entirely new visual medium. Photosynth analyzes each photo for similarities to the others, and uses that data to build a model of where the photos were taken. It then re-creates the environment and uses that as a canvas on which to display the photos.” Well, though the definition is quite simple, you have to see it to understand what it exactly does. Check out the video at the end of this post. There are thousands of cameras in the world. Those millions of cameras have shot billions of pictures of nearly everything that exists. So for example, I used to live in Agra till my college time. (OK, I’m NOT making this up, it really is my howtown). I have made tens of trips to the Taj Mahal. Sometimes with friends, sometimes with relatives, often alone, too. And on various occasions, wither me or someone with me had clicked pictures of the Taj Mahal. From various positions. Similarly, hundreds of tourists who have visited the Taj everyday must have clicked thousands of pictures of the Taj Mahal. Again, from various positions and angles. Coming to think of it, the Taj Mahal has been photographed from every viewable angle. Come to think of it, if you want to watch the Taj Mahal, in pictures, you can probably watch it on your computer itself. All of them. Provides you have access to all those pictures and you know which picture fits where. You can then model a complete virtual Taj Mahal, putting these pictures together. Well, that’s exactly what Microsoft did with Photosynth. Is it good ? Well, try it yourself. Just goto http://photosynth.com/ and click on any of the monuments listed there. I chose Taj a.) 'coz it’s my hometown b.) 'coz it’s my hometown c.) 'coz it’s my hometown and d.) 'coz it happened to have 100% synth, which means the Taj will be completely viewable in a 360 degrees using Photosynth. The monuments that do not have 100% Photosynth have a few elemental pictures missing, still. So, they won’t be picturized in full. How is this useful? Well, imagine this technology being meshed up with the maps application on mobile phones. So, while surfing Google maps (or Nokia Maps, for that matter), while you zoom in to the detailed views, you can actually see a structure from a 3D point of view. You can actually navigate through the structure, roads and streets. Imagine you are in a new city and have no clue about it. Using GPS and Photosynth, you can actually see the street that you are in. Then, instead of you moving forward and navigating the streets, you can use your phone to see what les ahead, in that left-hand turn that you can see 100 meters from here. And on large screens, the effects would be just mindblowing. Imagine using a 24-inch LCD screen to browse through the streets of France. While occasionally looking at both the sides of the street, to admire the ancient, 17-centuary architectural masterpieces. I have seen Europe in pictures and I know it looks beautiful; such an application would completely make it a WoW experience. Wonderful. Is this from Microsoft? One Hundred Percent. There are a lot of interesting projects going on in Microsoft Labs. Photosynth is just one of them. Microsoft joined hands with University of Washington to create the technology. Microsoft had always known to be very pro-developers, and now, they have started collaborating actively with the students and Universities. A lot has been changing at Microsoft, lately, although not everyone acknowledges it. So how are they gonna monetize it? Microsoft says they have not yet planned to monetize it. Monetization will be thought of later. It’s a good idea to let users sue it and get Wowed by it. Monetization can happen later. I’m sure of the utility of this innovation. Monetization won’t be a problem, once they create an API for this. This can be a huge add on for the smart phones. Our Take We loved this technology. Kudos to Microsoft for developing this. After the wonderful Video Search option innovation in LIVE Search, it’s a great leap ahead, for sure. I’m sure many will like it. And I’m sure this can add a lot of utility to many services. How they monetize it, is something that cannot be said right now. May be, like many other technologies from Microsoft, they will just leave it for user experience. It might be free for the users and they might generate their business from the network carriers or enterprises. But for now here is what I have to say - The WoW Starts Now.
Related PostsAlso check out Our Jobsite: WATJob Our Video Show: WATShow Our Gaming Blog: WATGame Our Consulting: WATConsult VC Funding Up By 120% in India - Advertising Segment ShinesThere is no dearth of funding in India and that can be clearly seen in the second quarter of 2008. According to the Quarterly India Venture Capital Report released yesterday by Dow Jones VentureSource, advertising start-ups have received maximum funding - $89 million-nearly 37% of the region’s quarterly investment total-went to five advertising/marketing companies, more than any other sector. The companies that got funded are as follows: 1. Bangalore-based online advertising network Ozone Media Solutions Pvt Ltd has received its first round of funding from IDG Ventures India - It’s rumored to be a $4 million funding deal. 2. $70 million second round for Laqshya Media of Mumbai, the second-largest deal ever completed in India. 3.Mumbai’s web-based advertising platform Ideacts Innovations raised $5 million from Sequoia Capital India. 4. Online video advertising startup Jivox raised $10.7 million in Series A funding from Helion Venture Partners and Opus Capital. Opus had earlier seeded the company with $2.7 million. 5. Emnet Samsara Media Pvt. Ltd funded by Intel Capital. Emnet Samsar Media Pvt. Ltd. is a digital advertising company that focuses on the public transportation sector. On Advertising sector receiving maximum funds, Jessica Canning, director of global research for Dow Jones VentureSource said . “…This highlights two growing trends within the region — one being a growing interest in advertising plays that capitalize on India’s emerging infrastructure and growing Internet usage; the other being an increase in second-round deals, which is expected as VCs are helping their portfolio companies expand and steering them toward liquidity.” Interesting Stats:
Ms. Canning added: “While the size of venture deals in the U.S., Europe and even China continues to climb, venture capitalists have shown some restraint in terms of investments in India, due largely to the risk still associated with this emerging region. In fact, since we began tracking venture investment in India, the median deal size has dropped from $17 million in 2005 to $10 million in 2006 and now to $8 million in the first six months of 2008.” Yet we have seen Venture Capital firms raising funds to invest. A good example of this is Nexus raising second fund of $220 M, after fully committing its first $100 M fund. Some time back Business Standard reported saying Seedfund is raising a $30 million fund. Since 2006 India has seen a lot of Foreign VCs funding start ups and growth of Indian Venture Capital firms. By 2010 we should start seeing some good returns. Let’s hope by then the VC bubble doesn’t burst. Related PostsAlso check out Our Jobsite: WATJob Our Video Show: WATShow Our Gaming Blog: WATGame Our Consulting: WATConsult Tripadvisor Launches In India.. Already Boasts of 1 lakh Registered Indians!Tripadvisor the travel community portal backed by Expedia has launched in India under the domain name tripadvisor.in. India alreday boasts of local travel portals launching their own travel community sites like Oktatabyebye by Makemytrip and Raahi by Yatra.com. Recently even WAYN the popular international travel community had launched in India and also hired a local agency for its digital initiatives here in India. So its no surprise that Tripadvisor is launching in India especially after the launch of its parent company expedia in India. Tripadvisor has an advantage over the existing travel communities in India because it already commands quite a sizeable Indian audience even before it has launched in India. Sharat Dhall, managing director, TripAdvisor.in, told afaqs, "We already have a lot of traffic from India on TripAdvisor.com. It receives about 5,00,000 unique visitors per month and 1,00,000 Indians have registered with it. We want to provide more content on destinations popular in India and we will regularly conduct surveys to find out which are the top 10 destinations and hotels in India." Tripadvisor also beats the others on the depth of information on its site which covers over 33,000 cities, 230,000 hotels and 76,000 attractions. Which can be quite useful for an Indian traveller looking to plan his/her holidays. On the whole this space can look forward to more interesting startups. as travel related content will have many takers as the travel industry grow. One ive heard of is trawellr.com which is still in closed beta. Related PostsAlso check out Our Jobsite: WATJob Our Video Show: WATShow Our Gaming Blog: WATGame Our Consulting: WATConsult New Startup Ramo Games Launches Kids Gaming PortalRamo stands for “play” in Gujrati and a new startup by the name of Ramogames.com has been launched. This gaming site is targetted at kids and is founded by Sumir Meghani a Harvard Business School graduate and Yahoo! alum along with others having experience with companies like Electronic Arts, Thomson Learning. Ramo Games is already angel funded and is based out of the Bay area in california and aims to build an interactive gaming portal for kids which also enables learning. They are also looking at launching kids MMOG games in the next year targetted at US and Asia markets. Kids gaming is one niche that have been covered by the likes of zapak by launching a separate vertical catering to the same. Though a interactive gaming portal that enables learning might be an interesting play given the fact that most parents might be open to such an idea for their tiny tots. Related PostsAlso check out Our Jobsite: WATJob Our Video Show: WATShow Our Gaming Blog: WATGame Our Consulting: WATConsult Comscore Search Report: India Searches Very Less.. Google Rules..Comscore has released a report on the online search market in India and the current outlook isn’t pretty for all the millions of dollars that have been pumped into search startups in the recent past. Lets have a look why? Firstly, Even at a Billion plus searches in June India forms less than 2% of the world’s search queries! Add to that India ranked second to last with 53 searches per searcher during the month, well below the worldwide average of 93. India also had significantly fewer search visits per searcher (14.7 vs. 23.6) and searches per search visit (3.6 vs. 3.9). Now given India’s online population which is 4th largest in the world the 2% of searches seems a huge dampener. Now some may argue that this only means that there is that much more potential for growth well Id be circumspect to say the least as even if thats the case the next point in the comscore report should be even more of a dampener! 80% of the search market is with Google. Rediff India’s largest portal has only 1.5%! Now this should tell all whose the king of the search market and why is it foolish to challenge google’s position. The likes of Guruji, Asklaila dont even make it to the list that comscore has posted on its site. Check the list below. As one can see from the chart above that facebook (which isnt even a search engine!) has searches happening which are close to that of rediff. One may question where is orkut? Well Orkut forms part of google sites and hence is included in the 81.4% chunk im assuming. This report just reinstates the fact that local brands haven’t been able to dent the market just yet. Even if the search pie grows its unlikely it will be totally skewed in the favor of the “Indian” search players given google’s dominance. In short its going to be one hard long tough battle for the search player whether they focus on local or generic search.
Related PostsAlso check out Our Jobsite: WATJob Our Video Show: WATShow Our Gaming Blog: WATGame Our Consulting: WATConsult Apple Offering Unlimited iTunes?
The much awaited iPhone finally hits the market today and its price has been a huge turn off for most of the Indians like me. While the iPhone in India remains a snob appeal I would like to be happy with my new iPod.
Apparently Tuaw.com an unofficial Apple weblog seems to have received a bit of information from an anonymous person. He claims that the late September Apple event may just prove to be a delight for Apple lovers. One of the best things that they might announce is unlimited iTunes.
Since the unlimited iTunes service might have brought a smile on your face let me tell you that the cost for unlimited iTunes s will be $129 (Rs. 5,418 @ 1$=Rs.42) for a year or $179 (Rs.7, 518 @ 1$=Rs.42) if combined with MobileMe. You will then get full access to high quality digital music. Moreover, there would be an option of “buy and keep” the track which would replace the subscription version of a song with a downloaded version.
Hey, wait a minute this offer does not excite me. I can buy and keep the music for a year? What happens after that? What if I wish to listen to the music after a year? Moreover, when I am able to download music, movies, applications and more stuff for free from various websites and applications like Lime Wire and Ares why should I even think about getting unlimited iTunes at a certain price. I guess Apple really need to re think about this strategy if in case they wish to make iTunes free.
What do you guys think about it? Related PostsAlso check out Our Jobsite: WATJob Our Video Show: WATShow Our Gaming Blog: WATGame Our Consulting: WATConsult More Recent Articles
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