Stumbled Upon

Microsoft Labs have come up with a new (actually not that new) application called as Photosynth. What it does is quite amazing. You take a series of random photos in a given location and this app tries to create a 3D view stitching all of them together. Kind of like the panorama option in your digital camera, but way cooler. You can just point and click in all directions with a lot of freedom and you don’t have to manually adjust the corners of each pic. It is still in beta but I’m already impressed.

So don’t waste your time, have a look at Photosynth, its loads of fun! And for your viewing pleasure I have created a synth with photos taken during my last visit to Munnar. Just click on the play button on the right top corner to view the awesomeness!

http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=640E95F1-F00B-4E7A-A415-DEF35146BA46

I came across this new kid in the block when it comes to search engines. It’s called Cuil, it’s pronounced as ‘kool’, it claims to have the largest index of them all and it was launched today. I was playing with it and this is infact an interesting one, probably good competition to Google in the long run.

The best thing I liked is the way the results come up on screen. Instead of going the Google’s famous sweet and simple way, the results page is more detailed, with longer content from the pages coming up. This works pretty good especially for more broad one word searches, for example : “cricket“. The results come neatly organized, presented in a visually rich manner but at the same time keeping it not too complicated. And there is a nice little info box on the right, which is pretty smart, where you can browse cricket related stuff by category.

But at the same time, try for a more targeted search like : “the best con movies“. It churns out all irrelevant results and the best you would get is a list of horror movies! You can’t go more wrong can you? Well let me give it some benefit of doubt, after all it is only 1 day old. Things should improve. And if it does, who knows it might be astalavista Google… naa, maybe not Anyways worth a try, play around!

The things the folks at Google come up with! Simple but excellent idea. Their aim is to make a collaborative video about how a “GMail” gets delivered! It is simple.. All you need to do is print out a GMail envelope, create a 10-sec video in which it enters from the left of the screen and exits out to the right and upload it onto YouTube. The editors at Google would stitch up a nice video from all this and show it to all the world… You can read all about it here. Let’s see what they come up with!

A good informal interview with one of my favourite journalist and author, Sir Mark Tully.
Watch it on ndtv.com.

I am currently reading one of his books – India in Slow Motion. Highly recommended reading! Maybe I will post a review in a few days too

Ever wondered where you stand in your political opinions? Here’s is an easy but quite accurate way to find out.

Have a look at http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz.html. It told me that I had a left-liberal attitude, which is what I think I really am.

So where do you figure in the political map? Tell me

I stumbled upon this ‘desi’ version of Summer of 69 by Anthragni. Heard it on a promo video for Manipal University. Very touching song… maybe because its my last month in college, but it did strike a note somewhere in me . Must listen to this.

You can get the song from CoolToad – http://as01.cooltoad.com/music/song.php?id=213127

By the way, I did not upload this song there, just happened to see it there. Do check the legalities before you download.