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Hardware 3D Accelerated Graphics Coming to Chrome

Paul Lilly — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 13:01:05 -0500

According to Greg Spencer, a Google Chromium programmer, hardware 3D acceleration might be coming to Chrome sooner than you think.

"The O3D team is working on getting O3D integrated into the Chromium build, and we're close to being able to complete our first step towards integration: To build the O3D plugin as part of the Chromium code base, and link it into Chromium DLL," Spencer stated in a blog post.

Chromium is the open-source project behind Google Chrome and Spencer said that he'll be making the Windows build of Chromium be dependent upon building O3D as part of the build process.

What this means to Joe User -- or more appropriately, Joe Gamer -- is an extra incentive for Web developers to build browser-based games capable of tapping into 3D graphics.

Google Earth Plug-In Now Available For Chrome

Andy Salisbury — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 14:14:05 -0600

For a while, the Google Earth plug-in was only available for Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. Now, it looks like Google has allowed their very own browser to get in on the fun, making it available as of this week.

“As of ~4 p.m. PST today, Google Chrome 1.0+ on Windows is an officially supported browser,” wrote a Google Employee in an Email sent out to a mailing list yesterday. “That means Chrome users will no longer get the unsupported browser message, and the plugin and API should work just as they would in other supported browsers.”

The plug-in makes websites such as James Stafford’s Mini Flight Sim and Thatcher Ulrich’s Monster Milk Truck available to users of Google’s web browser. And it takes us one step closer to Google’s ultimate goal, merging Google Maps and Google Earth so that they can act as a single product.

Image Credit: James Stafford's Mini Flight Sim

Bookmark Tagging and Organizing Dominate Extend Firefox 3 Grand Prize Winners

Mark Edward Soper — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 08:16:37 -0500

Mozilla's Firefox browser's biggest strength has always been customization. When Mozilla created Firefox 3, the huge improvements in its underlying architecture made Firefox 2 plugins obsolete. To help encourage a new generation of add-ons, Mozilla Labs launched the Extend Firefox 3 contest in March to create a new generation of plugins.

Entries wrapped up on July 4th, and after spending the rest of the summer judging over 100 entries, Mozilla Labs has finally announced the winners of Extend Firefox 3.

"The Envelope, Please"

Extend Firefox 3 presented grand prizes in three categories:

Best New Add-on
Best Updated Add-on
Best Music Add-on

And, now, the winners (drum roll, please):

Best New Add-on

Pencil - a GUI prototyping and diagramming application
Tagmarks - one-click tagging for bookmarks
HandyTag - automatic tagging for bookmarks

Best Updated Add-on

Read it Later - offline page reading
Tag Sifter - browse bookmarks by tags
Bookmark Previews - adds album and thumbnail views to the bookmarks manager

Best Music Add-on

Fire.fm - accesses last.fm music library (last.fm co-sponsored this category)

As you can see from the list of grand-prize winners, organizing your favorite Internet sites through better bookmarking is the dominant theme of Extend Firefox 3. To learn more about the winners, their projects, and the six runnerups, see the Extend Firefox blog.

What's your personal "Grand Prize" winners list of new or retooled plugins for Firefox 3? Hit the Comments button and tell us your favorites!

Microsoft Live Labs Photosynth Brings 3D Imaging Power to Everyone

Mark Edward Soper — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 23:57:17 -0500

Microsoft Live Labs, where Microsoft is helping to create the future of online information, released its Photosynth 3D imaging service yesterday, CNet reports.

Photosynth enables you to create a freely-navigable and zoomable 3D space by combining hundreds of photos with overlapping data, but unlike panorama-stitching programs, you get better results if you shoot your photos from a variety of different angles and zoom settings (or different focal-length prime lenses).Photosynth isn't for photography snobs, either. It works with all types of digital camera images, even from camera phones.

To sign up for Photosynth, you need a Windows Live ID (a free Hotmail account will work). After you sign up for Photosynth, you download free software for viewing synths (Microsoft's term for the 3D images you create with Photosynth) and for creating them. For best "synthiness," you'll need to shoot at least 100 pictures, and many of the examples you can view on the Photosynth website include 200 or more images. If you ever wondered why you need a 4GB or larger flash memory card for your camera, wonder no longer. A thorough Photosynth session can use up every bit of space on your largest memory card.

The website includes a Photosynth Photography Guide (links to PDF file) and a downloadable "how to synth" video in WMV format for viewing in Windows Media Player. Although Photosynth works on Windows machines only, the Photosynth viewer plug-in works in Firefox as well as Internet Explorer.

The illustration at the start of this article, captured from the example Synth "Smith Tower" by Jonathan Dughi, shows how Photosynth maps data points from overlapping photos to recreate the image in a zoomable 3D view. The viewer uses the Seadragon rendering and streaming technology also developed by Windows Live Labs.

Here's what you need to use Photosynth:

Photosynth runs on Windows XP SP2 and SP3, and Vista, and requires IE7 or Firefox 2 or 3. There are a variety of video cards out there and we haven't tested them all, but the general requirement is that you have a minimum of 32mb of video RAM, with 64MB or more recommended. DirectX7 is recommended. You should have at least 1gb of system RAM and a 2.0GHz CPU to get the most out of Photosynth. You'll also need a broadband network connection. On the Mac, Bootcamp will work, but not Parallels.

Drop us a comment after you've tried Photosynth and tell us what you think. If the site becomes unresponsive or goes offline from time to time, be patient. Photosynth is revolutionary, and there are a lot of people giving it a try.