Today at Google I/O, Sports Illustrated editor Terry McDonell showcased this demo of the HTML5 version of the magazine. Last December, SI released a mockup video of how their online version would look as an app, but this version is based on the web and can be viewed with laptop and tablet browsers. It looks like a print magazine layout, with fantastic spreads, photos, and fonts, but it also has a lot of unique multimedia features that are incorporated into the design.

In the presentation, McDonell said:

“The idea is really very simple: combine the best of the web with the best of the magazine, like the sports photography, which is deep, deep in Sports Illustrated’s DNA.”

SI’s really giving photography a great plug: the demo issue also has a behind-the-scenes portrait shoot with Shaq, and there’s an expanded photo gallery option for readers to see more shoots than the ones included in the main design. Even the interactive demo ad is photo-related, showing a faux camera brand with interchangeable lenses.

This web design really opens up the doors for visual and multimedia storytelling, and is an exciting way to make an interactive publication accessible (not to mention SEO-friendly) to the entire World Wide Web.

Let us know what you think about SI’s new magazine format in the comments.

The crazy awesome folks over at Google’s London office recently created a photo-mosaic of the company’s logo… by hand. Using 884 individually printed 4×6 photographs, they 5.5 hours assembling the piece, and used a camera to snap a photograph every 7 seconds. The resulting timelapse video shows the whole thing in a little over a minute.

(via Mashable)

Google just released the latest beta version of its Chrome browser, and created a pretty amazing video to demonstrate how fast pages load. Using a Phantom v640 high speed camera, they film the browser racing random Rube Goldberg-style contraptions at up to 2700 frames per second. For example, in one test Chrome races a potato gun. Sweet.

They also have a cool behind-the-scenes video showing how the tests were done. I can’t believe it took 51 takes to get the potato gun shot to come out right.

Google puts out some of the most creative ads I’ve seen. Check out this one for Google Translate, or this one for Chrome Extensions.

Google recently added high-quality street level photographs to Google Earth, presumably using the imagery captured through its Street View van cameras. While it’s an interesting development, the fact that everything is flat is a bit strange, and makes you feel as though you’re looking at an outdated video game. How many more years do you think it will be until we’ll be able to virtually tour the streets of a city in true 3D?

Google has acquired UK-based mobile photo search startup Plink for an undisclosed amount.

The company’s sole product Plink Art is an Android application that allows you to look up information about a piece of art by simply photographing it with your phone.

The application was one of the winners of Android Developer Challenge 2, scoring a $100,000 prize for winning in the “Education/Reference” category.

Remind you anything?

Artwork recognition is one of the features offered by Google Goggles, which is what Plink’s founders will be working on at Google.

Since the Plink only has 50,000 users, this is mostly a talent acquisition to improve Google’s visual search technologies.

The announcement posted to Plink’s blog gives a glimpse into where Google would like to go with visual search:

The visual search engines of today can do some pretty cool things, but they still have a long long way to go. We’re looking forward to helping the Goggles team build a visual search engine that works not just for paintings or book covers, but for everything you see around you. There are beautiful things to be done with computer vision – it’s going to be a lot of fun!

Imagine a world where you can “Google” information about anything by aiming your cell phone at it and snapping a picture.

Google Books, an ambitious project to make millions of physical books searchable online, found itself in yet another legal battle today after photographers followed in the footsteps of authors by launching their own class action lawsuit for copyright infringement.

In 2005, the Authors Guild of America sued Google for copyright infringement due to the fact that Google was scanning massive amounts of copyright material and storing them in its private database. Though Google entered into a settlement agreement in 2008, the judge presiding over the case would not allow other photographers’ groups to be involved in the case.

For this reason, American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) filed its own separate class action lawsuit against Google today, and is joined by a number of other organizations including the North American Nature Photography Association, the Picture Archive Council of America, and Professional Photographers of America.

Like the Authors Guild, the ASMP’s lawsuit deals with the fact that Google is scanning, indexing, and storing copyright work without permission of the copyright holders. The difference is that this new lawsuit focuses on photographs and visual works rather than written text. In a press release posted on its website, the ASMP states,

The suit [...] relates to Google’s illegal scanning of millions of books and other publications containing copyrighted images and displaying them to the public without regard to the rights of the visual creators [...]

We strongly believe that our members and those of other organizations, whose livelihoods are significantly and negatively impacted, deserve to have representation in this landmark issue [...]

We are seeking justice and fair compensation for visual artists whose work appears in the twelve million books and other publications Google has illegally scanned to date. In doing so, we are giving voice to thousands of disenfranchised creators of visual artworks whose rights we hope to enforce through this class action.

Furthermore, the ASMP states that the lawsuit is not limited to Google’s Library Project, but includes “Google’s other systematic and pervasive infringements of the rights of photographers, illustrators and other visual artists.”

While this is a pretty vague statement, we reported last month that Google had begun including copyrighted photographs from websites such as Flickr in its Maps application.

What are your thoughts on Google’s projects and how they impact copyright holders? Have photographers’ lives been “significantly and negatively impacted” by Google’s activities?

Image credit: In Google We Trust by sonicbloom

In an announcement on the Google Photos Blog today, Google announced that the maximum number of albums allowed for a Picasa account has been increased from 1,000 to 10,000.

While this is “good news” for everyone who uses the service, I wonder what percentage of users this actually benefits. Some statistics on Picasa usage would have been an interesting and illuminating addition to the announcement:

We want Picasa Web Albums to be a place you can share and store all your digital photos, regardless of how many you have. We recently made extra storage really affordable, but until now, Picasa Web accounts have been limited to a maximum of 1,000 albums. We heard that you needed more room, and because we want you to keep sharing your photos and posting them to Buzz, we’ve worked hard to now raise this limit to 10,000 albums.

Expect Google to continue beefing up Picasa in 2010 in order to seriously challenge Flickr for a bigger slice of the photo sharing pie.

If you’ve ever edited your Flickr photographs using the default image editor provided by Flickr, then you’ve used the web-based image editing software developed by Picnik.

Whenever you click the “Edit Photo” button above one of your photographs, it opens up the image in the Picnik editor.

Well, Picnik announced today on its blog that it has been acquired by Google. There aren’t many details available regarding the acquisition itself, but the web is abuzz now with speculation as to what Flickr will do.

Thomas Hawk suggests today’s purchase may signal that Google is trying to dethrone Flickr as image-sharing king of the web:

What else makes me think this? Google Buzz. While I consider Flickr superior in a lot of ways to Picasa today, the biggest advantage that Flickr has always held over their competitors is how strong a grip they’ve had on the social aspect of photo sharing. But now that Buzz has arrived on the scene (and your Buzz photos go into Picasa albums by default by the way), it would appear that Google finally has a viable social network to compete with Flickr’s own internal social network inside of Flickr. By combining the social power of buzz, with an enhanced version of Picasa, Google could mount a formidable competing offering to Yahoo’s Flickr.

It’s interesting that Flickr let Picnik slip into Google’s hands after partnering with them for so long.

What do you think today’s news means for Google’s Picasa and for Yahoo’s Flickr?

Just in time for the Winter Olympics, Google announced on Tuesday that Street View now includes imagery of several runs at Whistler Blackcomb ski resort, where many of the events will be held. To capture the photographs, Street View cameras were mounted on a snowmobile that made runs down the slopes. Here’s a look at what it’s like.

If they keep this up they’ll have to launch a Google Mountain View. Hah… hah… Get it?

(via Engadget)

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