Ok, this is inspired upon 2 ideas:

"You, in somebody else's vacation photos" (link below)

And

"timeAndPlaceSite" (link below)

Now, what I would love to see happening is a worldwide database of snapshots, clustered by time/place and with datamapped relationships between them.

Essentially, anyone in the world could upload thier pics (either though email, submit on the site, or through a photodeveloper in the same way as ravenswood suggested), agree that they retain copyright; but that the site can use them royalty-free, and the site would catalog them by time and location.

Not only that, but arbitrary meta-data could be generated based on time of day, angle of shot, etc.. Then each person that uploads could search for themselves or their friends via facial recognition (Technology already exists to do this realtime with video), or simply get all the pictures from a specific place for a certain timeframe.

Can you see the possibilities?

You could simply browse and still enjoy it. Browse by timeframe, browse by location, "walk" from one location to another - time independent -, take pictures of your house, business, neighborhood, upload and watch how it changes over time.

Have comments attatched to the pictures.. What do people think of this place? What did people think at this time?

Tie it into anyone with a mobile phone and a camera: Get up to the minuite pictures from anywhere! Want to see what the media won't show you about a protest?

Wondering what your travelling friend is up to?

Not only would it be an awesome way to enhance your vacation photos, but it could be better than a webcam page.. Eventually, the computer could be programmed with the geometry of certain cites and could acctually assemble a 3d render if there were enough pictures of enough angles available!

If done properly, I would pay for usage of this site /no problem/
-- JackandJohn, Mar 01 2003

ravenswood's idea http://www.halfbake...20vacation_20photos
You, in somebody else's vacation photos [JackandJohn, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004]

lardus's idea http://www.halfbake...ea/timeAndPlaceSite
timeAndPlaceSite [JackandJohn, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004]

Independent Media Center http://indymedia.org/
Want to see what the media won't show you about a protest? [-alx, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004]

MS research (they have way too much capital) http://wwmx.org/WebClient.aspx
Link found through [ http://research.microsoft.com/research/downloads/default.aspx ]. I wish someone other than MS could have the money, time, and resources to research and flesh out this sort of thing. [JackandJohn, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004]

Excelent idea. I'd pay for it too. Hypothetically.
-- Eugene, Mar 02 2003


A ha... fixed.

If the pic database were large enough, you could create time-elapse cartoons of specific locations and whatnot. A set of reference pictures for anywhere is chosen, showing the GPS position of any specific point on the map.
-- RayfordSteele, Mar 02 2003


Eventually resulting in the ultimate reality show, where everyone wears a viddy, and anyone can tune in anytime to anyone else to see what they are doing. As a bonus, the prospect of fatter royalty checks coming in if a lot of people watch insures that everyone at least tries to live an interesting life. As suggested, the viewers could add annos and even real time croissants and fishbones. (The ultimate victory of the halfbakery over reality.)
-- pluterday, Mar 02 2003


Ah, yes, one giant Big Brother where you get to track my movements without my permission. Doubleplus good.
-- phoenix, Mar 02 2003


[ phoenix ]; Yes, granted, it could open a few avenues for abuse, but privacy is not something one can reasonably expect these days anyway.. Besides; this is not a matter of taking more pictures, but using the ones that already exist.
-- JackandJohn, Mar 02 2003


"privacy is not something one can reasonably expect these days"

*sigh*

Such are the times in which we live.
-- -alx, Mar 02 2003


It gets a croissant from me!

Hmm, I am pondering how to bake such things...
-- lardus, Mar 03 2003


[ ravenswood ]: Exactly what I was thinking as a long term goal as well..

You could market it by rendering up a matrix-like spin on a particular scene :)
-- JackandJohn, Mar 03 2003


Ideally, you could do as Ravenwood suggested and have the computer generate what the layout of whatever the pictures are by piecing together the photos to form a total picture. Croissant!!
-- Underdrunk, Mar 03 2003


Hi JackAndJohn: please forgive this annotation, but I couldn't find any other way to contact you. I'm seriously thinking of baking the time&place idea of mine, and having discussion (via an email list) with anyone interested in it, and this idea of yours is a similar thing so I thought you may be interested. My email is timeplace at lardus dot plus dot com99 (but remove the numbers fom the address!)

The same goes for anyone else reading who is interested in joining an email list based discussion, email me...
-- lardus, Mar 04 2003


As an update: It looks like this sort of thing is very slowly coming, but just a long way away from the level of finesse I was origionally thinking of..

See link for MS research.

The change I would make is to implant a solid-state gyro and compass into the GPS unit that gives coordinates to the camera. Or, as a much better idea: build the GPS, gyro, and compass into the camera. EXIF info would be auto-generated when the shutter was opened.

Could even add time as a function of day/night light.

Then, you would know exactly what was going on, and so could and software, be it a 3D render program, virtual tour, or vacation page.
-- JackandJohn, Jun 24 2004



random, halfbakery