MLB.com’s TagOramic Takes Tagging to New Heights

Did you attend a 2010 Major League Baseball Playoff game? Do your friends not believe you…despite a fairly authentic looking ticket sub? Don’t worry MLB.com has eased your troubles. Now you can provide the world with irrefutable proof that you were there when the Rangers beat the Yankees, or when Roy Halladay threw the second postseason no-hitter ever, or even when Bobby Cox managed his final major league game.

Rolled out for the 2010 post-season, MLB.com’s new feature TagOramic, allows the user to find and tag themselves in the crowd of thousands of fans. By using a series of high resolution photos taken over a span of about 20 minutes, a picture of the entire crowd is pieced together in a giant panoramic view of the stands.

Fans can then browse through the giant photo to find and tag themselves and their friends. If you are someone’s boss and you suspect them of playing hookie to check out the Giants game, and you have the patience, you can browse the crowd looking for them face by face.

The giant photo uses a Google maps like interface to browse and zoom in on the picture and the definition on the faces of the crowd is remarkable. It doesn’t look like 100% of the crowd is represented, but the largest parts of the stands are included.

The tags can be linked to facebook and shared with friends, but after looking at some of the people in the crowd its very obvious that no one knew they were being photographed. Expressionless faces and awkward positions are abundant in the pics.

Maybe one day the tech will get to a point where these photos can be taken instantly. This would be an interesting way to capture a moment like a series winning celebration, or the crowd’s reaction to a walk off home-run. Until then, I’m going to dive into a few of these and look for old dudes picking thier noses, I’m sure there are some in there somewhere.