Microsoft Photosynth

Microsoft Labs have developed a new way to view photos on a computer. As they say, “our software takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for similarities, and then displays the photos in a reconstructed three-dimensional space, showing you how each one relates to the next. In our collections, you can access gigabytes of photos in seconds, view a scene from nearly any angle, find similar photos with a single click, and zoom in to make the smallest detail as big as your monitor.”

Think of taking a lot of images in a single location. Then think of creating a series of hyperlinks between them so that they can be synthesized and built into larger images and structures. That's pretty much the idea, but with one exception. Now imagine that you can search the web for photos and link them. In a sense, we can begin to build a visual world from the combined images produced by everyone. Sort of like this.

Here's a movie introducing you to the developers of the software, plus, of course, a demo.