Photosynth from Microsoft. I can’t really even explain how cool it is. It’s essentially a 3d gallery/rendering tool for photos, but really so much more. The examples that they show (Piazza San Marco, Venice and Gyeongbokgung Palace in Korean) are rad. They use people’s flickr photos to create a composite 3d image of an environment based on data in the photos. It’s not just using the photos to skin the 3d environment, but it arranges them so that you can randomly and graphically access full resolution of each photo in a wonderfully magical way. It’s some amazing technology, something that I’d actually want and use in my photo collection.

Photosynth currently runs as a demo in Firefox or IE7, but by no means is this some lacking browser-based demo. It’s awesome. I think you need the newest versions of java virtual machine, and you need to install the amazingly lightweight Photosynth Add-on (in Firefox, 5.5mb) but trust me, it’s well worth it.

Here’s the product: http://labs.live.com/photosynth/

Here’s the YouTube vid…I thought it was just a fluff demo, like the Microsoft surface table computer demo vid…a product that we’ll probably never see, but what he does on stage in the demo is available in full format right now from Microsoft labs.

On another note, today was an amazingly beautiful day–similar to a beautiful day in SF–80 degrees, clear blue skies, hint of a breeze. I walked around Central Park for hours. Photo not from today.