21 April 2011

Earth Day with Fine Fellow Alex Smith

University of Guelph leads with an article about the gigapan work of Fine Fellow Alex Smith.
Illah Nourbakhsh, a robotics professor at Carnegie Mellon University, says the Guelph biologist is “pioneering new ways in which gigapixel imagery can be used to capture the biodiversity of our planet.”
read more:
http://atguelph.uoguelph.ca/2011/04/gigapan-celebrates-earth-day-with-u-of-g-prof%E2%80%99s-imagery/

15 December 2010

Fine Fellow Chris Linder speaks at #AGU10


Today at  11:20am PST, Chris Linder will give a talk in the Imperative of Climate Literacy II session - Moscone South room 102 at the 2010 meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).

Multimedia storytelling

Chris Linder, Max Wilbert, R. Max Holmes

Multimedia video presentations, which integrate still photographs with video clips, audio interviews, ambient sounds, and music, are an effective and engaging way to tell science stories.  In July 2009, Linder joined professors and undergraduates on an expedition to the Kolyma River in northeastern Siberia. This IPY science project, called The Polaris Project (http://www.thepolarisproject.org), is an undergraduate research experience where students and faculty work together to increase our understanding of climate change impacts, including thawing permafrost, in this remote corner of the world.  During the summer field season, Linder conducted dozens of interviews, captured over 20,000 still photographs and hours of ambient audio and video clips.  Following the 2009 expedition, Linder blended this massive archive of visual and audio information into a 10-minute overview video and five student vignettes.  In 2010, Linder again traveled to Siberia as part of the Polaris Project, this time mentoring an environmental journalism student who will lead the production of a video about the 2010 field season.  Using examples from the Polaris productions, we will present tips, tools, and techniques for creating compelling multimedia science stories.

03 December 2010

Preserving Endangered Languages with GigaPan



CREATE Lab's Laura Tomokiyo recently returned from the Elders and Youth Conference in Barrow, Alaska, where she utilized GigaPan to help document Inupiak culture and language.

View several GigaPans taken during the Elders and Youth Conference

"I've been working with the Inupiat Heritage Center in Barrow, Alaska to do language and cultural documentation using GigaPan. GigaPan allows us to capture images of broad scenes - places and practices of cultural importance - and talk about fine detail in context. By introducing GigaPan as a tool for documenting endangered languages, we hope to capture linguistic events that are not easily elicited using conventional techniques while at the same time recording valuable cultural and environmental information and providing a tangible resource - the photographic archive - to the community. The larger objective is to develop standards for using GigaPan as a language documentation tool, so that the many endangered language communities that do have the necessary resources - technological infrastructure and language advocacy - are empowered to undertake their own documentation projects.

Preservation and perpetuation of the Inupiaq language is of critical importance to the community. Elders are most comfortable speaking Inupiaq. Their children - today's community leaders - are bilingual, but at a great price - they were punished for speaking their own language and sent away to schools in other parts of the country. As a result, English dominates among youth. Providing opportunities for youth to engage authentically in Inupiaq conversation is imperative for the survival of the language.

At the recent Elders and Youth Conference, which focuses on intergenerational learning and transmitting of core Inupiat values and knowledge, I ran several workshops to introduce GigaPan to the community. Some of the sessions focused on prints, which triggered animated discussion between elders about the difference between villages. Youth from several villages learned to use the GigaPan equipment, and hope to prepare a traveling gallery in the weeks leading up to or following the upcoming Messenger Feast (Kivgiq). Native speakers at the Heritage Center are developing annotations for panoramas in Inupiaq, as we develop best practices for cross-generational interaction with GigaPan panoramas for language documentation."

Laura Tomokiyo is a project scientist in the CREATE Lab. She coordinates the GigaPan Dialogues project with UNESCO, the Documenting our Heritage project with the North Slope Borough of Alaska, and formerly the Civil War Trails project with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Civil War Museum. Before coming to the CREATE Lab, Laura worked for over 15 years in spoken language understanding, including 6 years at a speech synthesis start-up and 3 years in Japan working for Toshiba, the Electrotechnical Labs, and Denshi-Tsuushin Daigaku.  She holds an SB from MIT in Computer Science, an MS in Computational Linguistics from CMU, and a PhD in Language Technologies from CMU.

Related Inupiak links:

24 November 2010

Gigapixel Science in the news

We are so excited to share some recent news:

November 5, 2010
Science
Panning for Science
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/330/6005/748.summary

November 12, 2010
National Geographic Daily News
Billion-Pixel Image Tool Probes Science Mysteries Ultra-zoomable GigaPan gives experts "incredible" new perspective
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/11/101112-gigapan-science-panoramas-technology/

Yesterday, in the November 23 issue of New Scientist, Colin Barras published an article featuring 3 papers and an abstract that were submitted to the gigapixelscience.org open call for participation earlier this year... by Mat Sisk, Matt Bertone & Andy Deans, Susan Lee and Matt Lamanna:

November 23, 2010
New Scientist
Hi-res camerabot explores great and small
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20827875.900-hires-camerabot-explores-great-and-small.html?full=true&print=true

this print article is accompanied by a post on the New Scientist Short, Sharp Science blog:
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2010/11/colossus-image-gives-best-view.html

AND also yesterday, Wired magazine featured the winners of the gigapixelscience.org Juried Gallery show as well as one of Janet Steven's timelapse gigapan videos:

November 23, 2010
Wired Science blog
Zoom In on Top 8 Ultrahigh-Resolution Science Panoramas
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/11/gigapan-science-images/?pid=643&pageid=42602

23 November 2010

Gigapixel Science thank you

We know everyone must have made it back safely to their corner of the Earth, as panoramas are already popping up on the gigapan.org website from a variety of your locales!  We hope – and believe – you each enjoyed the very first Fine International Conference in Gigapixel Imaging for Science as much as we enjoyed organizing it for you, and having the chance to meet many of you in person.

CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS
All papers accepted to the conference can be found here: http://gigapixelscience.gigapan.org/

MISSED A SESSION? WANT TO SHARE WITH COLLEAGUES & FRIENDS?
All conference sessions were video-recorded. We plan to make these available on youtube very soon, stay tuned, check http://gigapixelscience.org for updates!

We hope to see you all in 2012!

Sincerely,

Mary Jo Daines
Illah Nourbakhsh
Randy Sargent

04 November 2010

Panning for Science in Science Magazine

The GigaPan, CMU Create Lab's Illah Nourbakhsh and Randy Sargent + several Fine Fellows are profiled in Karen A. Frenkel's Science Magazine article "Panning for Science."

Excerpt from the article:
"GigaPans have captured the public's imagination. Five thousand systems have been bought, and today the site hosts 40,000 public panoramas that draw 20 million visitors a year; another 20,000 are in private areas of the site while contributors work on them. Sargent and Nourbakhsh began training scientists to shoot GigaPans in 2008, and some 120 investigators are now using the system in their research. In mid-November, scientists will share findings at the Fine International Conference on Gigapixel Imaging for Science, hosted by CMU and the CREATE lab." Click here to read the rest of this awesome article.
Science 5 November 2010:
Vol. 330. no. 6005, pp. 748 - 749
DOI: 10.1126/science.330.6005.748

18 October 2010

How GigaPan Stitch Works

This workshop, part of the Fine International Gigapixel Conference, will be held on Friday, November 12 from 1:30 to 2:15 pm, will be led by:
  • Paul Heckbert, GigaPan Systems
  • Alexandre Jenny, Kolor
  • Gene Cooper, Four Chambers
  • Randy Sargent, GigaPan Systems/NASA/CMU

GigaPan Stitch is software that takes overlapping digital images shot from a common viewpoint, and aligns and blends them to form a high resolution mosaic. This workshop will describe how the GigaPan Stitch algorithm works, including its strengths and weaknesses and should save users time shooting, stitching, and uploading.

Participants will understand the internal steps used by the Stitch algorithm: input image grid, image feature selection, alignment, projection, blending, and storage in an image quadtree, Learn the best camera and gigapan imager settings, and learn troubleshooting tips to correct common problems.

Register now to attend this workshop:
www.gigapixelscience.org