Page flakes as we Photosynth

I came across this really interesting site the other day. Basically, it acts like a news aggregator, online bookmark and favourites collection all thrown into one, collecting all the information you want for the web and putting it up in one convenient page for you to easily access. (You can spread your stuff over a few pages if you need to).

Best thing about Pageflakes is that it has a really nice graphic user interface and layout. Actually, come to think of it, it’s much like an online widget desktop, except that the flexibility of it being online means that you can take it everywhere with you if you travel a lot. A plus for those of you who are often out of the country and would appreciate a one-stop place where you can update yourself on home news, weather, email, your favourite websites etc. With internet access pretty widespread nowadays, you can even you this as a backup of your work schedule and contact list in case of any emergencies.

I also find this really useful for projects where people can come in and update stuff and keep updated on schedules, timelines, responsibilities, things to be done etc. You have the choice of creating a personal account with private login or can choose to make it a public account.

If you find this useful, do drop me a comment and let me know.


Another gem that I came across is this experimental visualization tool created by Microsoft Live Labs, called Photosynth. Microsoft Live Labs is an initiative by the computer software giant to bring scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs and the online community together to think about and build a better online world. You can read more about their vision for a better online experience in their Manifesto.

More about Photosynth. It is a brilliant piece of software takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for similarities, and then displays the photos in a reconstructed three-dimensional space, showing you how each one relates to the next.

I’m not quite sure what real world applications it has other than creating a sort of 3D experience but the great thing about this software is that your photos can be of really high resolution and it still loads up very quickly! This allows you to have very good detail in the visualization and enables one to zoom in very closely to each photo to see details.

I wonder if they could mash this up with Picasa and somehow find a way of connecting each of your photo albums in a similar way based on your tags or other customizable parameters. That would be really swell! And of course the graphical and navigational user interface on this piece of work really rocks! I’m impressed. Happy browsing!