NASA release new Photosynth collection
Interesting to see that NASA have released a Photosynth collection covering the preparations of the launch of the space shuttle Endeavour.
If you haven't come across Photosynth before it's worth taking a look at it. Produced by our Live Labs team, it's a technology that takes a collection of photographs and arranges them into a 3D "model" that you can navigate within a web browser. The clever part is that the software is able to recognise similarities in photographs that might have been taken by different people at different times, and is able to arrange these so that they provide an accurate representation in 3D. Take a look at http://media.labs.live.com/photosynth/NASA/whatis.htm for a description of how the technology works.
Pretty smooth.
Oh and if you're wondering what the Live Labs team is all about, here's my totally unofficial description: The Live Labs team work on technologies that are likely to make their way into Microsoft products in the near-ish future. Compare this to the Microsoft Research (MSR) team who work on technologies that are much further out and may never become shipping products, or at best may only be a part of shipping products in the longer term. Live Labs was actually formed by MSN and MSR and their work is mainly focused on internet technologies. See http://labs.live.com/Live+Labs+Manifesto.aspx for a more formal (and more accurate) description.