By using Photosynth in Turkey we have created some important collections. By the help of photo enthusiasts we have taken more than 5000 pictures in the historical Sultanahmed Square. The first two collections that I will demo in the screencast is Blue Mosque and German Foundation.

German Fountain, Istanbul ,Turkey
The German Fountain (in Turkish Alman Cesmesi) is a gazebo styled fountain in the northern end of old hippodrome (Sultanahmet Square), Istanbul, Turkey and across from the Mausoleum of Sultan Ahmed I. It was constructed to commemorate the second anniversary of German Emperor Wilhelm II's visit to Istanbul in 1898. It was built in Germany, then transported piece by piece and assembled in its current site in 1900. The neo-Byzantine style fountain's octagonal dome has eight marble columns, and dome's interior is covered with golden mosaics.

Blue Mosque - Sultan Ahmed Mosque, Istanbul, Turkey
The Sultan Ahmed Mosque (Turkish: Sultanahmet Camii) is a mosque in Istanbul, the largest city in Turkey and the capital of the Ottoman Empire (from 1453 to 1923). The mosque is one of several mosques known as the Blue Mosque for the blue tiles adorning the walls of its interior. It was built between 1609 and 1616, during the rule of Ahmed I. Like many other mosques, it also comprises a tomb of the founder, a madrasah and a hospice. The Sultan Ahmed Mosque has become one of the greatest tourist attractions of Istanbul.

If you’ve seen Minority Report and watched with glee as Tom Cruise effortlessly navigates piles of media with lightning speed using only his hands, you’ll immediately recognize Seadragon. Blaise Aguera y Arcas and the team at Windows Live Labs have created an engine for managing large collections of images effortlessly. Through their own special brand of hot sauce, the team has been able to build software that loads only the pieces of large images that it needs at any moment in time. This breakthrough allows the user to experience their collections of images instantly. By adding Photosynth to the recipe, the team is able to stitch images together and determine the three dimensional space where pictures were taken.

When the power of Seadragon and Photosynth are combined with images from many different sources, the potential applications become very exciting. Fusing the photos of a particular location taken by multiple people, geo-data can be learned as opposed to manually entered. Now if only we could merge these technologies with some gloves with glowing fingers…