Thursday, January 22. 2009

Did High Res Imagery, PhotoSynth Capture the Inauguration?

Renay San Miguel of TechNewsWorld says "sort of":

Here's the problem with both the GeoEye satellite photos and Photosynth: They certainly were had-to-be-there experiences, as long as "there" was your computer. On a compatible PC or Mac, the CNN.com Photosynth app kills; on TV, "The Moment" was more of a "meh" moment, despite King once again showing his mastery of a touchscreen on steroids (this one provided by Perceptive Pixel.) Yeah, it's kind of cool to finger-flick from a photo of Obama on the dais to John Cusack in the crowd to Oprah Winfrey elsewhere in the crowd, but audiences raised on "CSI" software fantasies weren't likely to be overwhelmed by 2-D turned into 3-D turned back into 2-D on your TV, even if your TV is HD. (Don't OD on this, OK?) Same thing with the GeoEye photos; impressive as they are, the crowds still looked like smudges on those in-studio touchscreens.

These offerings and live streaming, Twittering and more created a firehouse of coverage. I love the fact that there were "so many ways" to be part of this event - from watching live footage (on TV, Internet, mobile...), listening to radio, via various user generated images and text...

The firehose doesn't work so well for me; I watched a few moments on TV, but turned to my favorite medium for news, radio for the rest. The enduring image for me is one I didn't even see, it was described to me. It filtered out the chaos of the crowds, the need for security, the layers of technology: the NPR commentator described Obama's daughters skipping up the dias.