After hearing Kevin Rose mention Photosynth on Diggnation, I thought it sounded cool so I checked it out. Photosynth is a project in the Microsoft Live Labs where you traverse through or look around 3D landscapes that are built using 2D images. The first downsides of it are quite apparent as you enter the site and use it. It requires you to install software on your computer to get this to work, and it is Windows only. I decided to go ahead anyway. I had a look at some of the featured Synths on the home page and they looked pretty cool.  It was cool to have a look around a city using this thing. It was also cool to see how it did this weird 3D dotty thing to represent an object from a 2D environment, such as a statue.

I decided I would try and make one. I spend a bit of time thinking of an interesting scene or object to take picture of that would work in Photosynth and look pretty cool. After a little while thinking, I remembered a spot close to where I live where I could see my whole suburb and the houses and surrounding. I decided that I would go up there with the camera and take heaps of shots, the way the instructional video said. I took 74 shots from up there. I decided to put them into Photosynth. It takes quite a while to do its magic and upload it to the internet, so don’t expect results straight away because it can take 1-5 hours. Mine took under 3 which wasn’t bad. I could wait.

After it had done everything, it was available for viewing online. I like to think I had done a good Synth, and the thing told me it was 100% Synth. You can check it out on the Photosynth site, it is publicly viewable. Photosynth is a really hard thing to describe. It is really something you have to see, and play with for yourself. This technology is really exciting and I look forward to seeing it evolve and get better, and then applied to useful applications, such as a mapping application or a virtual store or something of the sort. This is just the beginning of what this technology can offer and bring to the table.

Tomorrow I will be leaving for an overnight school trip. We are going somewhere not too far away and will be doing something that I do not know. So as of around 11pm tonight, that will be the last time I use my computer until I get back on the Tuesday afternoon.

Now that’s around 40 hours with no computer, no cellphone or iPod or anything of the sort. I am not going to have any technology for a long time. I can’t remember the last time I have been away from my computer for that long, but its probably been years. The longest I am usually away from the internet world is about 10 hours which isn’t that long but I am going to be away from it all for 40 hours and in 10 hours the internet moves pretty fast so I’m going to have a lot to catch up on being away from it for 4 times that.

Being away from the internet for so long is going to make it hard to come back with a huge pile of articles in my RSS reader, stories on Digg, Tweets to read, and other things to catch up on. This opportunity my help me by evaluating my internet usage and possibly help me make some cuts on unnecessary parts so I have more time to do other stuff and be more productive. As well as helping me through the experience of going away, it may also help me in my current life, online and offline. Maybe 40 hours away from it all will do me some good after all.

Yesterday, the premiere of Tekzilla got released. Tekzilla is a technology related show hosted by Jessica Corbin and Patrick Norton. The show delivers product reviews, computer help, tech tips plus do it yourself projects. The show has everything tech, from iPods to camcorders, HD to the Internet, anything and everything.

I initially was disappointed because this show was replacing one of my old favourites, InDigital. This tainted what I though about it and went into watching the first episode expecting it to suck. Now that I have seen it, I don’t think that it was that InDigital was ending, I don’t think that it was because something was replacing it, it was because I will miss the host I have grown to love over the past two years. I will miss Hahn and Wil.

Anyway, the episode blew me away. I loved it, really loved it. There is not much I can say about this show but you have to check it out. I do believe Revision3 has a winner here and I can’t wait to see it grow as time goes on. I would hope that we do see special guests on the show to make it more lively and interesting, and no, I’m not saying Patrick and Jessica are boring or will become boring, far from it actually.

The first episode was basic. They showed a great review on a video on demand box, they had some great tips on making better looking videos by showing camera techniques, they showed a battery hack to use a big 12 battery to power your handheld devices and they also showed you a nice piece of software for RAM diagnostics. You really have to check out the show yourself to witness how great it is. If I was rating this show, five dragons out of five dragons.