Microsoft's Photosynth : A new way to share

The collage image in the lecture today from the pictures on the bus reminded me of an interesting photo technology I saw recently and which is a great example of how web 2.0 can facilitate massive online collaboration of users in the construction of online media.

Effectively, the tool will be an image search that creates a 3d representation made up of the thousands of user tagged photos that one can navigate through, in any direction, at will. It really is best seen in motion and interacted with, but it looks like this...

You can't search yet but there are many examples already live.

Our world is ever more recorded and with the increasing prevalence of high end camera phones, as well as the millions of photos already waiting to be tagged online, our surroundings may be digitally archived for future generations to travel through or perhaps today, just visiting a place you've never been to.

The potential it holds is great and will also be useful in many other areas such as one's own digital photos, as many people have gigabytes of images to navigate.

Give it a go!

http://labs.live.com/photosynth/