Night Danger: Dictionary of Words in the Wild over 3500

Moose Danger Sign

The Dictionary of Words in the Wild has now over 3,500 images and over 4,500 words. Willard McCarty delivered a paper at the University of Western Sydney reflecting on the Dictionary, “Stepping off the edge of the world or into it: The Dictionary of Words in the Wild as research?” Willard is the star contributor, but I’m catching up with pictures taken on the move across Canada including the moose danger sign above which is seen frequently on the Trans-Canada in parts of Ontario and Manitoba.

A Brief History of Neon — New York Magazine

Image of Camel Ad

In A Brief History of Neon in New York Magazine I came across reference to Artkraft Strauss one of the first and most important makers of neon signs, ads and marquees. Artkraft Strauss dominated the design of neon signs for Times Square including the new year’s midnight ball-lowering. Artkraft Strauss is still around as a design and consulting company and they have a great archive of images of “100 years of commerce, design and Times Square celebrations”. It is a treasure of neon sign design in New York from the first days.

Microsoft Live Labs: Photosynth

Screen ImageMicrosoft is getting a lot of buzz for their preview of Photosynth which can analyze large collections of photos of a space (like St. Marks in Venice) and then reconstruct a 3-D space by stitching the photos. The 3-D space can be used to navigate the photos. Microsoft has a preview that runs on Windows XP SP2 and Vista.

Photosynth is based on the work of U of Washington Computer Science Ph. D. student Noah Snavely and his advisors. He has a page on Photo tourism: Exploring photo collections in 3D with a cool Java demo with datasets like the Trevi Fountain.

Screen Image A related Microsoft technology demonstrated at TED is Seadragon which allows smooth scaling and transition of high resolution images so you can zooming can become navigation. See Blaise Aguera y Arcas: Jaw-dropping Photosynth demo (video).

Thanks to Matt and others for pointing these out to me.