Tech & Biz

Microsoft's Photosynth available for download

by Jason Sanders | August 21, 2008 at 08:58 am

929 views | 6 Recommendations | 5 comments

While Microsoft Live Labs isn't quite as well known as the Google Labs, they've been responsible for several innovative, web-based products and services. Photosynth, which has been eagerly anticipated since it's 2007 demonstration at TED conference, was released yesterday and promises a change in the way photos are shared.

Imagine being able to share the places and things you love using the cinematic quality of a movie, the control of a video game, and the mind-blowing detail of the real world. With nothing more than a bunch of photos, Photosynth creates an amazing new experience.

The closest comparison would be the photo stitching program you might use to create wide landscape photos mashed with flickr. Events and places can be stitched together from thousands of photos from thousands of users, creating amazing mosaics of the Eiffel Tower, Lion's Gate Bridge or your street.

[Photosynth] is "creating hyperlinks between images and it's doing that based on the content inside of the images," Blaise Aguera y Arcas, an architect at Microsoft Live Labs, said during his TED presentation. "When you do a web search for images, you type in phrases and the text on the web page is carrying lots of information [about that photograph]. What if that picture links to your pictures" via Photosynth?

It doesn't work on Macs at the moment (except through Bootcamp); but it appears as if they are working on a solution.

Unfortunately we're not cool enough to work on your OS yet. We really wish we had a Photosynth that worked cross platform, but for now it only works on Windows.

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eibo.richter

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 00:14 on August 22nd, 2008

Jason Sanders, I like this story. It's good stuff.

Jason Sanders

at 07:24 on August 22nd, 2008

Thanks ebio! I've been waiting for Photosynth for a while. Too bad about the non-Macness :(

WaterRabbit

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 11:25 on August 26th, 2008

Jason Sanders, I like this story. It's good stuff. I recently discovered this program and I am very interested in the what can been done. Some people have made some very creative photosynths and I can't wait until my first one is done. Thanks for the story.