I heard a report on the radio today that said in the next few years photosynth will be an every day word. People will say, he said, "I can't go out now because I am photosynthing. He didn't really explain it well, but it's something to do with 3-D images. Apparently there is some beta-testing being done now by Microsoft, and the whole site shut down because of too much activity.

Do any Wordcrafters know anything about photosynthing?

Yes. I received a very nice email from a lady called Gill at Microsoft who urged me to take a look at a demonstration of this new video system. I looked at it and found it quite impressive, giving a wider range of perspective than does a normal video. But I did find it difficult to find out as much as I wanted since the comments area was filled with Spam and rubbish.

The technique is supposed to offer 3-dimensional video but this is not strictly true to my mind since 3-dimensional viewing to me implies stereoscopy - and you can't get that with a normal single image.

I did write to Gill with my points of view and she thanked me for them. So nice to be able to communicate with an intelligent, literate and helpful person.

I am sure she'd not mind giving anyone further help and advice and she can be found here ukupdate@microsoft.com

Anyone who wants to look at the Spam-laden blog with the photosynth demonstration can see it here http://virtualearth.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!2BBC66E99FDCDB98!15392.entry

Very impressive! Here's a sample. You can get the same thing by going to Kalleh's link and clicking on "About Photosynth." See Wikipedia's article.

Yes, it is impressive.

But not three-dimensional according to Wikipedia's own definition since there is no depth perception.

"Operating System: Only Windows XP (SP2 or SP3) and Windows Vista are supported at this
time. Running Windows on a Mac? Photosynth runs under Boot Camp only. Parallels
and other VM software cannot run the viewer."

This is not true. It works fine under VMWare OSX.

It reminds me of QT VR, which was way cool in its day.