Photosynth: Picasa on Steroids!!!

We have commented on Gigapan.org before so I figured I should pass along some pretty cool non-Google technology. The good folks at Microsoft Labs have developed a really cool way of publishing your personal photo album from sites such as Picasa or Flickr. Microsoft's Photosynth takes your digital photos that may have been taken by different cameras and at different times and extracts distinct features like the corner of a building or a window pane or anything else that can possibly be identified in a series of images. See below...

These point features are then stitched together in some kind of a triangulated mesh. Like features are found in the photo dataset then their 3-D postion is found. See below...

Microsoft has also considered some major issues like seemless zooming and panning. I highly encourage you to check this out at the Photosynth "Try it" page. Install their ActiveX control and away you go. Enjoy...