You know when you are on holidays and you take a hundred photos of essentially the same thing? "What a waste of time!" you might say. Or if friends at an event take basically the same pictures you have, but from a slightly different angle? What if you could somehow assemble them all into one big "mega-picture" that would give you a panoramic, scrollable, zoomable, stitched together view?
Photosynth is the answer. A great test of this technology was the inauguration speech. Using Photosynth, multiple users were able to upload their pictures to create a sweeping vista of the event, up and down the Mall, with the ability to zoom in and out, and even look left to right, up and down. All it takes is someone to upload a pic and it gets added to the mix.
Unfortunately, there is no uploader for Macs, and the full-view is a PC only interface. If you download Silverlight, macophiles can get a taste of the full effect. I'm looking forward to a Mac version so I can start uploading my holiday clips!
