The GPU Technology Conference: NVIDIA's New Focus in a Changing Market

Cooliris

Website: Cooliris | Discover More


Cooliris has been around for more than three years now, but they are still considered an emerging company and as such were pushing their new web browsing plug-in at the GTC. The goal of this plug-in is to provide a visual search tool which can replace the usual list view sites like Google, Amazon, Craigslist, Hulu or any other search engine have with fully interactive 3D slideshows. It installs right over the top of many existing browsers which makes the transition seamless for most users.


Unfortunately, until recently graphics processing power required to display this type of interface wasn’t available to most consumers but things have rapidly changed. With even mobile phones packing some serious graphics processing horsepower, Cooliris has been able to launch their downloadable across platforms such as the iPhone and it will also support upcoming Tegra-based devices as well.

I have personally been using Cooliris since being introduced to it about six months ago and let me tell you, it is almost impossible to go back to standard searches.

Visioglobe

Website: Visioglobe.com


In order to put what Visioglobe does into perspective, just imagine your run-of-the-mill GPS device on roofies and Red Bull and you’ll have an idea of where this company sees thing heading. They figure we live in a three dimensional world and it’s time on-screen navigation took the next logical step in visualization by stepping forward with true street level views.


Part of the demo we were shown is above and even though it was shot with a digital camera, it is hard to mistake why people seem drawn to Visioglobe’s approach. With the ability to link in to social networking sites and display people’s positions in real-time, it definitely has potential outside of mundane “point A to point B” directions.


Nvidia’s Tegra chip was powering the palm-sized device, the graphics themselves aren’t going to wow you with their fidelity but that isn’t the point of this early beta version of the program. Rather, what we were seeing was a demonstration of where GPS devices are headed in the near future and how the Terga can be used to move certain fields into higher levels of visualization.