PhotoMesa: gratis zoomable image browser

[Curt]

I have never heard of this before today, but PhotoMesa 3 is a free (any donations per PayPal), zoom-able, image browser from Windsor Interfaces. There are a lot of capable image browsers out there, but with PhotoMesa 3 Windsor is trying to find a niche, and I think they are doing a fine job. They are not competing on number of advanced features, but on broad but easy usability, and speed. For an example: left-click is zoom in, right-click is zoom out. This feature can even be licensed for coders' .NET applications. PhotoMesa 3 requires .NET 1.1 or 2.0.

After-edited: They are also competing on annotating features. 

Demo link for Windows Media Player:



(- the "photomesa.com" address in the video is from when photomesa was shareware.
And the image quality is of course fine, and not terrible as the video make it seems to be.)


There are several ways to have it display your images
- this thumb is merely my way of showing 2975 pictures at the same time...



- this view of course has mouse-over preview / popup / tooltips


Or another view ("scroll"):





One problem I didn't understand at first is that you may need to remember to uncheck which folders to display before you close PhotoMesa if the folder was very big, because next time PhotoMesa will open with those pictures loaded, which in this situation of course will make it load very slowly. On the other hand this can be a major time saver in a different situation.

Another rare feature is that PhotoMesa has default option to merely show representative photos if your collection is larger than 500 pictures. You can of course change this number, or simply disable the feature.


http://www.windsorinterfaces.com/photomesa.shtml 

[cmpm]

Nice find Curt,
There's a couple more freebies there too.

I like the PhotoMesa for sure.

[Curt]

There's a couple more freebies there too.

Yes, DateLens, for Pocket PC, and NoteLens, for Windows PCs

NoteLens is a note-taking tool that is so fast, it lets you concentrate on your notes - not on the interface.  NoteLens is designed to help you stay in the flow. You never spend time deciding where to store notes, save them, or even give them names.  NoteLens takes care of that for you.  With a lightning fast full text indexing system, you can quickly find any note just by typing any word - all of the notes containing that word will be pulled up as you type.

NoteLens integrates with Microsoft Outlook.  You can import notes from Outlook, and then keep NoteLens and Outlook synced.  (Although you don't need Outlook to take advantage of NoteLens.) With Microsoft ActiveSync, your notes will be synced with your Microsoft Pocket PC.  NoteLens even syncs contacts and email, so you can have integrated super fast access to all of your critical information.  And you can rely on NoteLens with confidence, knowing that they are backed up in Outlook - and also stored in a simple text format so you'll never be locked in.

We have found that NoteLens quickly becomes an integral part of users' lives - always running on the desktop, and just a keystroke away from jotting an idea down, or pulling up yesterday's thoughts.


[attachthumb=#]


    * Extremely easy to use - notes are instantly accessible
    * No filenames, directory structures, or manual saving
    * Integrates with Microsoft Outlook
    * Sync Outlook notes, contacts or email (fast!)
    * Mark favorite notes for even faster access
    * Assign categories for finer control
    * Import existing text notes from the file system
    * Expands your memory!

Read the News about NoteLens.
NoteLens is designed to help you stay in the flow.
Read the research that led to NoteLens.

System Requirements:

    * Windows 98 and up
    * .NET Framework (distributed with NoteLens)
    * Outlook is not required except for syncing
      (Outlook Express is not supported)

http://www.windsorinterfaces.com/notelens.shtml

[PhilB66]

PhotoMesa was mentioned by tmpusr in 2006

Anyways, freewaregenius published a nice review titled "Browse, annotate, and organize your image library with PhotoMesa, a “zoomable” image browser"

[blackcat]

omg..PhotoMesa has such a awful interface..can't he create the interface a little nicer?

[cmpm]

I'd like to see this done with .doc's.
Both this one and ImageWalker could do it if the documents are saved in a picture format.
But that isn't the idea.
If one could view their .doc's in this way, that would be quite the deal.
FastView and others can view .rtf files but not any .doc's or .tmd's.
I guess PhotoSynth can but I haven't tried it.

[PhilB66]

I guess PhotoSynth can but I haven't tried it.

I doubt you could view docs with Photosynth

[cmpm]

Hmm, yeah quite correct PhilB66, I just checked it out.
Not designed for docs, that's for sure.
Some awesome photo work though.

[Curt]

... Photosynth

Hmm... My one year old PC was not modern enough to run Photosynth... 
- so now I know at least one place where the makers of this low-price machine saved some money!

I'd like to see this done with .doc's.
...
FastView and others can view .rtf files ...

FastView from http://f2soft.ax3.net/ gave me this:

[attachimg=#]

- so I couldn't try this one either. 

Maybe this was just not my day. 

[cmpm]

Sounds like you need some maintenance there Curt.
My old clunker p3 with 750 something pc100 ran photosynth enough to check it out before I tried too much....lol..

there's some good stuff mentioned here that I use.
I'm not at home so I'll just list them.
Type them into google or DC and you can find them.

1. Gladys Utilities
2. Clean-up by Steven Gould
3. Runscanner at runscanner.net
Ha! I can remember that one.

Some of these other folks here know more then me about why you are getting those errors.

[cmpm]

That's rich text files-.rtf, you knew that.
Yeah fastview should read those, some of these other programs also.

Anyway another good cleaner is ATF-Cleaner.
Spell it like that and it will come up on google.

[PhilB66]

ATF-cleaner is good but works on XP and Windows 2000 only. Disk Cleaner is another very good one.

[Curt]

... freewaregenius published a nice review...

The verdict: even if you already use Picasa or another image management software you might want to try this. This program (a) is original and innovative, (b) introduces a very cool and interesting way to browse image collections, (c) allows for tagging image files using people and category tags, (d) allows for adding captions to images (e) stores metadata information in the image file itself, and (f) is free. Oh, and (g) is a definite Freewaregenius pick!

Sounds like you need some maintenance there Curt. My old clunker p3 with 750 something pc100 ran photosynth enough to check it out before I tried too much....

Maintenance.. yeah...
"New" must be the key word. Having read about Firefox 3, RAM, quad-core, and Vista pre-fetch, I am all ready to invest! (Not that FF 3 has much to do with Photosynth, but I am literally beginning to dream about SPEED!!)

[cmpm]

Here's fastview with a readme file which is .rtf.

And Phil, ATF doesn't run on Vista?

[cmpm]

oops, my mistake, that's a .txt file
so scratch the .rtf for now

[PhilB66]

I noticed the following comment on the download page:

[attach]

[cmpm]

Seems vista may have their reasons for all that.

Anyway here's the same file saved as rtf from MSword.
FastView will read it.

edit-gotta use that darn spellchecker more, or quit typing fast.....

[cmpm]

I think the key to PhotoSynth is your graphics card.
It says that an onboard graohics card will not perform.
And you need the latest ...

http://labs.live.com/photosynth/installer/sysreq.aspx

I played with it from this link in the PhotoSynth main page.

http://labs.live.com/photosynth/view.html?collection=sanmarco/index1.sxs&st=coll

[cmpm]

this one is very cool

http://labs.live.com/photosynth/NASA/default.htm

as well as the other collections
how to put one together yourself isn't ready yet, i think