PhotoSynth is Microsoft Live Labs' first major Technology Preview and the team has posted a sneak peek at the work which they’ll be demonstrating next Wednesday at SIGGRAPH 2006 in Boston.

PhotoSynth takes a large collection of photos of a place or object, analyzes them for similarities, and displays them in a reconstructed 3-Dimensional space. With Photosynth you can:

• walk or fly through a scene to see photos from any angle;
• seamlessly zoom in or out of a photograph even if it's gigapixels in size;
• see where pictures were taken in relation to one another;
• find similar photos to the one you’re currently viewing;
• explore a custom tour or see where you’ve been; or
• send a collection to a friend.

Everyone I know who's seen PhotoSynth demoed internally at Microsoft has been wowed by it. Now the demo video is available for download and  the PhotoSynth Team blog is here with their post Announcing Microsoft Live Labs Photosynth Technology Preview.

You can see videos over on Microsoft Live Labs, on Channel 9 and on 10.

128 dimensional vectors - super cool :-)

is cool too.

[Update : 060801 The BBC has now reported this, and, of course, /. has followed :-) ]