Earlier this week, TechCrunch reported on fotowoosh, a service that "will turn any picture into a 3D image".
I blogged about this a bit ago whilst it was known as the popup project, a research project developed by Derek Hoiem out of CMU.
(Microsoft are also developing something similar - PhotoSYnth.)
Replying to comments on one of his own posts, Stephen Downes writes:
Having been around enough to have seen some history (and still a bit surprised to be in such a position) I would suggest that most of the 'innovations' brought to us by Google, Apple, Yahoo, Microsoft, YouTube etc. originated in academic environments and were copied by the corporations in question. In some cases, the corporation itself had its genesis in an academic environment.
I quite agree... and with the commoditisation of web scalable infrastructure that you pay for as you use it (think Amazon web sevices, Zimki and so on) I wonder whether the trend will be towards increasing numbers of academic projects spinning out of the lab (or maybe even course project work?) and into beta?
So - maybe there's scope for a TechCrunch Academic, that can cover neat stuff going on in academic research labs and help out with academics' often neglected public engagement and knowledge transfer activities.
Yes, of course some of this stuff gets talked about and demoed at academic conferences, but often it languishes at project's end.
Who knows, maybe a bit of techbuzz at the right time could spur on academic innovation and entrepeneurship, as well as pure research?
PS have you seen the new, Google maps presence enhanced MSG messaging client?
Get MSG - the world's simplest instant messenger (open source, web-based lite Jabber instant messaging client).
Posted by ajh59 at April 18, 2007 07:38 PM