Double Happiness: Microsoft Integrates Photosynth With Virtual Earth

Microsoft is today announcing the intregation of Photosynth , technology that enables you to automatically stitch groups of photos together into one big interactive 3D viewing experience, with its mapping service Virtual Earth . I think that's really cool, because I'm a big fan of Photosynth and I also happen to think Virtual Earth is vastly superior to - yet immensely less popular than - Google Maps / Earth. In the video it's releasing on YouTube for the occasion (embedded below), Microsoft claims 'hundreds of thousands' of users have already used Photosynth - which was released to the public back in August 2008 - and uploaded more than 12 million photos in 350,000 synths. Now it's taking the next step by using Silverlight technology in order to make it possible for user to port their Photosynths to Virtual Earth, running on Macs and PCs alike.