The Photosynth Technology Preview is a taste of the newest - and, we hope, most exciting - way to view photos on a computer. Our software takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for similarities, and then displays the photos in a reconstructed three-dimensional space, showing you how each one relates to the next.

In our collections, you can access gigabytes of photos in seconds, view a scene from nearly any angle, find similar photos with a single click, and zoom in to make the smallest detail as big as your monitor.

If you're into photography or imaging, you're going to love this. Make sure you check out the San Marco demo collection. The Tech Preview currently works only in Internet Explorer, so fire it up and take a look.

At long last, Google Talk supports offline messaging.
I don't really like the idea of having to enable chat logging in order to get offline messages, but I guess it's better than nothing. Speaking of which, the number of people on my GTalk contact list has actually increased (although it's still no match for my MSNM...err...WLM list). Either this means that GTalk is starting to pick up a bit of steam, or it just means that I've met more geeks during the last few months. Somehow, I think it's the latter. :P

Meanwhile, Windows Live Messenger raises the bar again with the latest v8.1 beta by adding support for roaming identities (among other things). This means that your display picture and personal message follow you when you sign in from different locations - a welcome change for me since I frequently switch between my desktop and Tablet PC. Now if we can get support for multiple sign-ins like GTalk, that'll be even better.

I'm also back on the AIM network since last week, thanks to the AIM Lite client. This is an official client from AOL that's meant to be a cleaner, leaner alternative to the regular app. I don't like the UI too much (it feels out of place), but a lightweight, basic client that allows me to send and receive messages to and from my AIM-loving buddies is just what I needed to get back on the network after having tried and disliked just about every third-party, multi-protocol IM client out there.

Fellow BSG fans - Halloween is coming up in a few days, so Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories (love the name ;P) shows you how to make your very own Cylon Jack-O-Lantern, complete with the awesome red scanning eye.

Check out the video clip on YouTube. I think they should try to slow down the lights for even more authenticity. ;)

(P.S. Last week's episode rocked!)

I became a big believer in dual-core CPUs after I got my Core Duo based Tablet PC a couple of months ago. In fact, the clearly noticeable benefits in multitasking performance prompted me to sell off the Athlon 64 4000+ in my desktop and replace it with a dual-core Opteron 165 this week. The cost difference was a mere $20, so it was totally worth it.

The Opteron 165 cores run at a stock speed of 1.8 GHz compared to the 2.4 GHz that the single-core 4000+ did. But anyone who has read anything about the Socket 939 Opterons knows that they're an overclocker's dream come true. I'm currently running the processor at 2.6 GHz with the voltage dropped downto 1.28V, so it runs nice and cool, and at 800 MHz above the stock speed. The performance is already on-par with a $600 FX-60 for a fraction of the price. I'm sure I can safely crank it up some more with a few tweaks, but that's for another day... :)

Folks, meet my new favorite feed reader. :)

Back when Google launched the first version of Reader about a year ago, I was pretty disappointed. The old UI, while different and perhaps even innovative in some sense, was almost unusable for me. Many others apparently felt the same way. So the Reader team took a step back and redesigned the interface to make it a little more like other web-based aggregators, but with some interesting features of its own.

I started playing with this new version of Reader a few weeks ago on the corporate network while I was interning at Google, and I loved it instantly. I was eagerly waiting for the public release so that I could switch over, and of course, blog about it.

So what are some of the things that I really like about the new version? Firstly, it's fast. This is extremely important to me. If I can't skim through all my feeds quickly, the aggregator fails the test right away. Almost every other aggregator I've tried that uses AJAX has failed for exactly this reason. Google Reader uses a neat trick to overcome lag - if a feed has more than 20 new items, only the first 20 get loaded initially, and as you scroll down the list, the next 20 items get loaded asynchronously. There's no pagination, so it's fluid and continuous, but it's still zippy and responsive. Posts also get marked as read as you scroll past them. Nice.

Secondly, the UI is clean, appealing, and makes good use of space. Besides the traditional "Expanded" view, which shows the full contents of all the items in the feed, there's also a "List" view that's very Gmail-like. It simply shows you the post title with a one-line summary, and each post expands out when you click on it.

Saving items for later is also quick and easy, just like it should be - you "Star" items, just like you do in Gmail again. NewsGator Online is also pretty good at this, whereas adding a post to the Clippings section in Bloglines still needs too many clicks. You can also tag posts/feeds, which is something NewsGator Online and Bloglines don't support yet.

Oh, and of finally, the devs have a sense of humor. That's always a plus in my books. ;)

Go try it out. I think you'll like it too. The response on the web has generally been very positive this time around.