Artist MWM recently visited the Bay Area and these shots capture the essence of the place and the things that inspired him.

A group of computer scientists from the University of Washington’s Graphics and Imaging Laboratory have created an algorithm that improves the technology behind Microsoft’s Photosynth to render massive environments in 3D.

Lisa Oppenheim, a photographer based out of New York, recently utilized the images from the ultimate coffee-table book, 100 Photographs that Changed the World, to build a star map based on their historic context.  She explained the process to I Heart Photography,
…source images were found in a time/life book, 100 photographs that changed the world. i am plugging the time, place and date of each photograph into a computer program that makes a map of the stars from any place at any time. i am printing out the star maps and drawing the stars by hand onto acetate and printing [...]

Using 35 million geotagged photographs from Flickr, David Crandall and a team from Cornell University have created accurate global and city maps from the data alone. Plotting the raw data from the photos (geotags, text descriptions, key visual features) onto a blank canvas revealed the planet’s familiar landscape, as well as  where in the world people were placing their attention. They also discovered some interesting facts from the experiment, such as: New York is the world’s most photographed city (12 million images), and the midtown Apple Store is the fifth most photographed location in the city.
[New Scientist via The Morning [...]

ArtificialOwl.net is a photographic collection of the abandoned material objects and places in our world. The images are both hauntingly beautiful and a disturbing reminder of wasted possibilities. A wide variety of abandoned subjects are explored, including man-made homages like the Cadillac Ranch. Dormant buildings are shown that are slowly being reclaimed by nature, or being reclaimed as graffitti canvases. Surreal caches of mammoth airplanes and cargo ships also highlight the tail end of the industrial life-cycle. Well worth a browse to understand the magnitude of our throw-away culture.
[via Adfreak]

The Boston Globe’s Big Picture has yet another great photo essay, this time about robots. The images show off the surprisingly wide range of robotic devices that exist in the world today. From scary military devices to cute robot seals that are used to sooth patients in hospitals, to the Da Vinci robotic surgery system, it’s a fascinating look at a much-hyped area of technology that’s finally looking to become a more integral part of our daily lives.
[Robots - The Big Picture]

Seen in NYC…. “we own the street”