LiveSide - News blog : PhotoZoom

Deep Zoom Composer Updated To Support Publishing To DeepZoomPix!

Sunshine — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 09:34:26 GMT

Just two days ago, we were wondering if the Deep Zoom Composer will be updated for use with DeepZoomPix, as it previously supported uploading to PhotoZoom. Wonder no more! It has indeed been updated and you can download it, right here, right now!

Download Deep Zoom Composer

As always, please uninstall all existing versions of Deep Zoom Composer before installing the new version. You can leave any feedback you have on the forums or in a comment to this team post.

Thanks team for updating so quickly!

PhotoZoom Is Now DeepZoomPix

Sunshine — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 20:27:09 GMT

Did you spend a lot of time creating your PhotoZoom albums, as I have? Then take note of the following:

PhotoZoom is now DeepZoomPix!

PhotoZoom got released in March 2008 and can be seen as the initial incarnation of DeepZoomPix. DeepZoomPix is a technology demonstration designed to show three technologies: use of Microsoft Silverlight to create a rich interactive UX for exploring images, the Silverlight Deep Zoom technology and Windows Azure Services Platform.

Now what does this transition mean? Don’t worry about your PhotoZoom albums (yet), they are still there, be it that you need to update your embed code/album URL if you integrated it into your site.

[click to see larger]

There are lots of cool new features:

- Seamless navigation:
DZP enables the seamless exploration of albums of photographs. Users can navigate the photographs using mouse or keyboard and zoom into them to see them at their highest resolution. Users never wait to reload a page – the entire experience is fluid.
- Layout options:
Arrange images in different ways including by in a calendar style view by date.
- Dynamic filtering:
Tagged images can be filtered interactively with live updates to the displayed set of images and you can add your own tags to images.
- Interactive slideshow:
Users can zoom into and pan around images while they are playing a slideshow. Slide timings are customizable and navigation can be controlled using the keyboard.
- Import photos from the web:
DZP can access images stored in other services on the web. If you are a Facebook user, the DeepZoomPix Facebook application enables you import your public Facebook galleries into DZP. If you are a Flickr user, DZP can use the Flickr API to import your Flickr photos. Finally, if your photo service provides RSS feeds containing JPEGs, DZP can use those too.
- Shareable mini-viewer:
Embed your slideshow in your blog or website, or send to a friend using the DZP mini-viewer.

Sounds good, no? One thing I don’t like is the fact that when you embed the viewer you can’t see the whole album at once, as you could with PhotoZoom, only a slideshow now. Unless I overlooked of course, if you find a way to embed the whole, please let me know! And there’s another catch you won’t like: on December 31st 2009, when this technology demonstration is closing, your albums will be gone too! Look at point 4 of the DeepZoomPix rules you have to agree on when you get started:

[click to see larger]

Can’t say I’m happy with that, can you? Sure, showing off technology is nice, but then to take it away? You can’t download your pictures from it either, so make sure you back up your pictures elsewhere.

And what is going to happen after December 31st? Will this technology be solely for developers, the DeepZoomPix FAQ clearly states there is no intend to turn DZP into a product or a service, or will we see it integrated into Windows Live Photos? And what about the DeepZoom Composer, will this be updated to work with PhotoZoomPix? May we see this integrated into Windows Live Photo Gallery perhaps (if this technology is extended to WL Photos)? I sure hope for both, dev stuff and the Windows Live Photos/Windows Live Photo Gallery integration as in my opinion this technology should be available to everybody, not just the very techsavy ones.

Deep Zoom Composer – February 2009 Preview Released

Sunshine — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 10:30:35 GMT

Another update to the Deep Zoom Composer has just been released. This release only contains fixes to issues that were reported to the team. More information on these fixes can be found on the Expression Blend and Design team blog.

Download Deep Zoom Composer

Not sure on how to use Deep Zoom Composer? Check out the User Guide. You can access this by going to Help > User Guide or by pressing F1. Any ideas for future Deep Zoom Composer releases? Let the team know here!

Deep Zoom Composer Forum
Previous Deep Zoom Composer articles

Deep Zoom Composer Has Been Updated: Documentation And Bug Fixes!

Sunshine — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 13:08:54 GMT

When I found that I couldn’t open previous projects, I headed over to the Deep Zoom Composer Forum to let the team know of this problem. Kirupa was quick to respond to me and I’ve sent him one of the non-opening .dzprj files for investigation, as did others.

As a result there now is a new Deep Zoom Composer release which no longer has this problem, at least not for me. I sure hope you didn’t delete your old project files! Should you still have said problem, please send your non-opening .dzprj files to Kirupa (address can be found in their blog post), so they can look into it.

Besides this improved project support the memory handling has also been improved, the Seadragon Ajax Templates have been updated again and various other tweaks were done.

Download Deep Zoom Composer

NOTE: Please uninstall any older versions of Deep Zoom Composer prior to installing this new version.

Don’t forget to check out the updated documentation! It has become a true User Guide with topics ranging from what Deep Zoom is to how to actually use Deep Zoom Composer. You can access the User Guide inside Deep Zoom Composer by going to Help > User Guide or by pressing F1.

Feel free to post your questions or comments over at the team blog or at the Deep Zoom Composer Forum. They do listen!

Deep Zoom Composer Updated: Seajax Support, New API, And More!

Sunshine — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 11:04:00 GMT

The Deep Zoom Composer got an update.

What’s new in this release:

- Seadragon Ajax Support, you can now export your compositions as a Seadragon Ajax project
Seadragon AJAX is a JavaScript-based implementation of the Deep Zoom functionality found in Silverlight. This can be used if you don’t want to “force” your readers to install Silverlight and still want to offer zoom capabilities.
- New and Improved API, easier integration of Deep Zoom tiling functionality into your own applications through a .NET/managed DLL
- Updated Project Templates for both Silverlight and Seadragon AJAX

Besides these there are numerous bug fixes.

Note: uninstall any previous version you might have of the deep Zoom composer before installing this new version.

Unlike previous versions this version is not backwards compatible: you will not be able to open your previous compositions! Instead you will be presented with the following prompt:

Install a new version eh? You can check if you have the latest version by opening up Deep Zoom composer, then navigate to Help > About Deep Zoom Composer and check if it says November 2008 Release. Of course you have the latest, you just installed it!

Don’t delete those old projects just yet, this may just be a mistake. We’ll keep you posted!

Download Deep Zoom Composer
Deep Zoom Composer Forum

Deep Zoom Composer And PhotoZoom Site Updated For Silverlight 2

Sunshine — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 10:03:00 GMT

We already told you that Microsoft Released Silverlight 2, but along with that a new version of the Deep Zoom Composer has also been released.

Nothing new in this version besides reliability improvements and that it now works with the newly released Silverlight 2. The team is focusing on improving existing features as they are getting close to wrapping up work on version 1 of this powertoy. Details on some of those under the hood changes will be posted on their Blog in the upcoming months.

As you already know, via the Deep Zoom Composer you can upload to PhotoZoom, so this site has also been updated to work with the new Silverlight 2 release.

Download Deep Zoom Composer

You can leave your feedback here or on the Deep Zoom Composer Forums.

Did you know: you can launch the Deep Zoom Composer by double-clicking on the project file (.DZPRJ) itself.

Previous LiveSide articles:
Deep Zoom Composer
Photo Zoom

Windows Live On Facebook

Sunshine — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 04:20:00 GMT

On Facebook there are some applications about making use of Windows Live Services. I’d like to take a moment to highlight some of them.

Windows Live Messenger
With over a million users just 4 months after its launch, probably the most known of all. This one recently got a big upgrade. One of the most exiting new features is the possibility to update your Facebook status message from Windows Live Messenger! You can now set your Facebook status with your Messenger personal message. All you have to do for that is to allow this in the Messenger application's setting page:

I seem to have some problems with this feature, as in it’s not working on the new Facebook….could be just me, let me know your experiences with it….

The chat box, so people can chat with you from your Facebook profile, isn’t added automatically in the new Facebook either. To get the box (in “Boxes” tab by default) you will have to navigate to Applications > Edit All Applications, click All Applications in the left pane, then click the pencil icon behind the Messenger application an choose “Edit Settings” and on the Profile tab click “add”:

Quite some workaround…..Facebook hasn’t gotten any easier with its new lay-out :(

Photozoom
Make your Photo Albums Zoom. PhotoZoom creates zooming albums from your photos, using Microsoft Silverlight Deep Zoom technology. PhotoZoom automatically imports your Facebook photo albums each time you visit the settings page. On this settings page you can also tell the application which albums you would like to show on Facebook. You can create additional albums, upload high resolution pictures, import your photos from other photo sites and more at the PhotoZoom website or you can be in control of the layout and create your album with the Deep Zoom Composer (which also uploads to the Photozoom website).

MapMate
MapMate utilizes Virtual Earth and allows you to see where your friends are based on where they say they are, right down to street level! In order for this to work your friends, who also have Mapmate, will need to specify where they are. So no, it doesn’t use reverse IP or anything of that sort. How to specify your location: on the map navigate to where you are and right click on your location, a red pin with a pop up will then ask you if you wish to update your status. Click save and that’s it, all done..now your friends can find you! Don’t forget to update your location when you move again, else your friends might just turn up there and find you are not there anymore…. Beware of stalkers!

Aerobis, Train social
Another app that makes use of Virtual Earth, this time to organize and analyze your sport. With a route planner, a Sport-log and a Sport-Report. The sport profile uses the metric system (kilograms, centimeters), so that might take some calculation. An easy way to do this is to use an online converter such as Common Lenght and Distance Converter and Common Weight and Mass Converter. Even without the profile you can upload a route (KML or GPX) or create one by clicking on the map and have the application draw the route and calculate the distance for you. You can also allow others to see your routes and search routes that have been published by others. More info at the Aerobis web site.

StarFactor
Check your StarFactor. This Facebook Application created by Microsoft will tell you if you are you a Mr/Ms. Nobody or real star material! The more gossip you create on Live Search, the higher your score. Try to beat your friends, boost your buzz and enter the world of Glitz ’n Glam.

More read of interest:
Windows Live Messenger Developer Blog
Matt Augustine Tech Blog (Photozoom)
Virtual Earth Blog - Virtual Earth Applications on Facebook

For all previous LiveSide posts about these subjects and more, take a look at The List.

Have you noticed we are also on Facebook?

Edit: added StarFactor, thanks Kris Hoet for reminding me :)

Deep Zoom Composer Updated (Again!)

Sunshine — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 18:27:12 GMT

Just a few days after the last Deep Zoom Composer update, it got updated again. This to address many of the issues that arose with the previous version.

The Export tab has changed to make clear you need to create an account on PhotoZoom before you are able to upload via Deep Zoom Composer
Time-out for uploads has been increased

Before you install this new version you need to uninstall the previous one first!

If you are unsure if you have the latest version you can check by going to Help > About, make sure it says build date 3 August 2008.

Download Deep Zoom Composer

Should you still run into problems let the team know on their forum.

Deep Zoom Composer updated; now with photo stitching

Kip Kniskern — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 13:21:00 GMT

The Expression Blend and Design blog has announced an update to the Deep Zoom Composer, now available for download. In addition to bug fixes and performance improvements, the Deep Zoom Composer will now upload to PhotoZoom. Now you can store and serve Deep Zoom photo albums you create on PhotoZoom, or upload photos from the Deep Zoom Composer.

We’ve been telling you about Deep Zoom Composer and PhotoZoom, check out our posts for a quick refresher. You can also read more about Deep Zoom Composer in this User Guide.

The Deep Zoom Composer now also includes the same photo stitching technology from Microsoft Research that powers photo stitching in Windows Live Photo Gallery.

PhotoZoom and SLS get Silverlight 2 update

Chris — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 04:36:14 GMT

Emil Protalinski just caught the Silverlight 2 Beta 2 update to Silverlight Streaming, which also effects the PhotoZoom service.

For those of you who haven’t tried PhotoZoom yet, the service allows you to implement the Silverlight DeepZoom technology on your own photos, via a web UI – Microsoft does all the processing for you. There’s already a Facebook Application that was rolled out in April, but we somehow missed mentioning the Live Clipboard integration despite taking a screenshot of it. See the nice little orange icon below, that’s the one. Maybe we’ll be seeing this more in the future, Windows Live Calendar maybe?

PhotoZoom Updates and Facebook Application

Sunshine — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 22:59:00 GMT

It's little over a month now since PhotoZoom got released. Matt Augustine let's us know about the updates PhotoZoom got since then.

Where previously you had to upload your pictures (jpeg) one-by-one, if you didn't already have them in a feed, you can now upload several at the same time. To do that, select multiple pictures after you click the browse button on PhotoZoom album page.

Also, in a previous article we told you how to embed your album with a little trick. You can forget about that trick, the code you need is on the album page at the bottom.

So it's just a matter of copy and paste now. You can change width and height to whatever you like.

And last but not least of the updates, performance changes have been made so your albums should be processed faster. The photos are viewable immediately but the album is not zoom-able till it's processed. Large albums may still take some time though, more improvements will be made in the future.

PhotoZoom Facebook Application

Are you on FaceBook? Matt has created a PhotoZoom application for Facebook that you can install. It imports and updates your Facebook photo albums automatically each time you visit the Photozoom settings page on Facebook (click the PhotoZoom icon in the applications list). You can select which albums you want to show on your profile. Albums you created within PhotoZoom are also available, new ones you created there will also be shown on your next visit of the settings page.

The cover photos of the albums will show up in the PhotoZoom box. Clicking on one loads the Deep Zoom album in the canvas page.

Side note: no, I do not own 2 cars. It's the previous and current one.

You can view the album in full screen mode by clicking the link above the album. This will load the album in a new, full screen, browser window.

You can not edit your Facebook albums directly in PhotoZoom. If you look at such an album there, instead of the Upload Control you will see this image which includes a direct link to your albums on Facebook.

PhotoZoom is an experimental site developed at Microsoft, running on the Microsoft Live Labs Incubation Platform. It uses the Deep Zoom technology in Silverlight 2 Beta 1 to create photo albums with user uploaded photographs.

Many of these newly added features were by popular request of users, try them out and keep the feedback coming.

Silverlight 2 and Deep Zoom - Get ready to build your own photozooming collections

Chris — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 06:08:00 GMT

Steve Clayton just posted about part of the Silverlight 2 Mix08 demo, specifically a feature called Deep Zoom which is implemented over at http://memorabilia.hardrock.com/. Deep Zoom allows users to smoothly and seamlessly zoom in and out of a collage of images, and was first demoed a year ago at Mix07 by Ray Ozzie. The Mix Online website has a video of it in action.

Now with the launch of Silverlight 2, these zooming capabilities are available for all developers to implement, thereby adding Photosynth / Seadragon technology to their web applications. As if that wasn't cool enough, there's something in the works for end-users too (Scoble get those tissues ready!)

For those of you with good memories, we have previously talked about a related Live Labs project - Windows Live PhotoZoom Alpha. Here's how we described it last time:

"Though not yet released, at a basic level PhotoZoom will allow users to add photos via an upload tool or import from an RSS/Atom feed. These can then be viewed as thumbnails or at their full resolution. Once processing by the server is complete, the zooming functionality is enabled."

Yes that's right, Microsoft is working on a service that allows users to recreate this zooming technology for their own photo albums. As we mentioned last year, the release of this service was dependent on the zooming technology in Silverlight being publicly shipped - which it now is!

If you haven't yet installed Silverlight 2, you may want to do so in order to experience the demo sites coming out of Mix08 - we'll let you know when PhotoZoom is available (soon all being well). If you really want to satisfy your curiousity in the meantime, we made a somewhat grainy video of a very old version of PhotoZoom in action. Disclaimer, it probably won't look too much like this now, and obviously the video was never WaggnerEdstrom approved.

(Image unashamedly stolen from Steve)

Microsoft launches FeedSync for data synchronization via feeds - previously known as SSE

Chris — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 07:33:00 GMT

Today at the Mix'n'Match conference taking place in Redmond, Microsoft announced a new Windows Live service that enables the sharing of data through standard web feeds such as RSS and Atom: FeedSync. The specification is now available to developers from http://www.feedsync.org/ under a Creative Commons License.

Previously known as Simple Sharing Extensions (or SSE), the specification has evolved, from an idea first put forward by Ray Ozzie, through discussions between Microsoft and the SSE online community. What makes the FeedSync specification useful is that it as well as enabling data inputs from multiple devices/locations at the same time, it is designed to resolve any conflicts that may come about as a result.

For example, imagine if Windows Live Calendar beta offered FeedSync capabilities. Users would then be able to subscribe to their own RSS feed, and if they so wished, ammend appointments simply by editing the feed. Of course this would require a FeedSync client, something not yet available, but it would seem like a good use of the technology.

For those wishing to test out SSE, you can do so over at Live Labs. We've got a test feed of our own, though we don't really know what to do with it at the moment - that's early adoption for you. Permission for the feed can be set based on Live IDs for both reading and editing, though at the moment there is no contacts picker, just the manual entry of email address. Other things to note are that it displays your Live ID alias in the feed, and that deleted items don't seem to get removed.

If you're wondering how we got the pictures in our feed, its because we previously played around with Windows Live PhotoZoom Alpha, and so this account has some options our other accounts don't. From this it seems as though there may be the ability to embed Silverlight Streaming applications in the future, but that may be a leap of logic too far for this v1.0 spec & demo. It is worth noting though that both PhotoZoom and FeedSync/SSE are products of the Ray Ozzie Concept Development Team.

Windows Live PhotoZoom Alpha: Silverlight powers new Microsoft Live Labs project

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 03:45:00 GMT

There's a new project brewing in Microsoft Live Labs, Windows Live PhotoZoom. This alpha project from Ray Ozzie's Concept Development Team is Silverlight based and allows seamless zoom controls on consumer photos in a web based application. PhotoZoom also makes use of the Photosynth / Seadragon technology developed by Live Labs, which most recently has been seen in the Photosynth collections released by the BBC. While you may not yet be able to recreate the BBC's work, PhotoZoom is another step towards this.

According to Matt Augustine of the PhotoZoom team, "PhotoZoom is an experimental site that brings the zooming capabilities first shown during the Silverlight demos in the Mix07 keynote to consumer photography." Note that the currently available alpha/beta builds of Silverlight do not feature the zooming feature that is required for PhotoZoom, so the timeline for this Live Labs project being released is dependent on when this Silverlight update becomes public.

Though not yet released, at a basic level PhotoZoom will allow users to add photos via an upload tool or import from an RSS/Atom feed. These can then be viewed as thumbnails or at their full resolution. Once processing by the server is complete, the zooming functionality is enabled.

We've created a short video of the zooming in action just to give you some idea how smooth and quick it is, apologies for the poor resolution, unfortunately screencapture programs didn't do the transitions justice. We'll see if we can work something better out.

Windows Live PhotoZoom Alpha video demo

As always we'll let you know when PhotoZoom is available. In the meantime, check out the great stuff going on with the BBC and Photosynth.