I just can't resist this.. Microsoft has succeeded in producing something called photosynth that looks truly fantastic, a mechanism to link pictures (from any source e.g. flikr) together into cohesive, zoomable, navigable, QTVR-like virtual worlds. Have a look at one of the most impressive demos you will see this year here.
If it doesn't have this functionality already, it will undoubtedly be linked to geo-spatial coordinates as discussed in this post about Google Street View, thus completing the complete "virtualization" of the real world. Ahem, wow!
What I can't resist noting for posterity is that I suggested exactly this idea to several of my friends nearly three years ago and they unanimously dismissed it as impossible (mostly the stitching problems). This is akin to a similar situation in which I suggested the development of a system that would allow musicians to play together online, simultaneously which was similarly panned as impossible, this time do to network latency. Now, of course, you can visit ejamming.com to experience exactly what I had proposed.
Not to be too whiny, I hope, lessons learned:
ignore doubts (and doubters)
in a world with 6 billion+ people in it, the value of a single idea is minimal, no matter how novel, in comparison to the value of the work that goes into actually making it happen. There are probably thousands of people that have dreamed up these things independently, kudos to those that made them reality!
it sure would be nice to have the resources of Microsoft (case a) or Aerosmith (case b) to back up your lunatic ideas..
I can't wait to see what comes next :)
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