Microsoft Photosynth Creator Among the 2008 World's Top Young Innovators

Blaise Agüera y Arcas, the father of Seadragon and one of the creators behind Microsoft Photosynth has been awarded among the exclusive 2008 Young Innovators Under 35 group put together by Technology Review magazine. Arcas made it on the elite TR35 Listing out of in excess of 300 nominees, thanks to the work he poured into building Photosynth. According to the Redmond company Arcas is scheduled to be honored by Technology Review, at the magazine's EmTech08 Conference which will take place between September 23-25, 2008 at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"Seadragon and Photosynth are changing the way people think about software, and they both suggest a future in which what we see on our computers actually exceeds our imaginations. This vision is Blaise's mission, and I fully expect that Blaise's best contributions are to come," revealed Gary William Flake, Ph.D., technical fellow at Microsoft.

Photosynth is a technology designed to build navigable 3D spaces out of 2D photographs. Still in Technology Preview stage since it was introduced, Photosynth permits users to seamlessly explore multi-gigabyte collections of images without any impact on the performance or resource usage of their computer. In fact, the technology works independently of the amount of data the user is browsing or the bandwidth of the network.

The Seadragon technology developed entirely by Arcas was combined with the Redmond company's Photo Tourism project, in a collaboration between Microsoft's Live Labs, Microsoft Research and the University of Washington to put together Photosynth. Arcas has been a member of Microsoft Live Labs since 2006.

"The TR35 honors young innovators for accomplishments that are poised to have a dramatic impact on the world as we know it," added Jason Pontin, editor in chief and publisher of Technology Review magazine. "We celebrate their success and look forward to their continued advancement of technology in their respective fields."