Most of my 2 readers know that: I’m a Mac Fan Boy…
We could put it another way: I’m usually not impressed with what comes out of Microsoft.
But once in a while, let’s face it, they have some pretty cool stuff.
Surface is cool, for instance.
But this time it’s more than cool. This time, it’s mega-cool.
This time it’s Photosynth.
I discovered it like 2 years ago, via there Live Lab website.
Photosynth takes a collection of photos of the same place, and merge them in a huge 3D/360° panoramic.
It’s completly amazing.
At first, it was a University of Washington project called Photo Tourism, and they didn’t screw it when they brought it back in Redmond.
The videos of the prototype are down, now that the product is live. One is available on Youtube though (even if it’s less appealing in low res…). They also presented a demo at TED last year.

You can’t access Photosynth from a Mac. I especially like the phrasing of the error page:

Unfortunately, we’re not cool enough to run on your OS yet.

BootCamped Mac will do; parallel or VMware won’t.
Try it, it’s really amazing.