Photosynth caught my eye - and the eyes of lots of other bloggers as well. Announced at SIGGRAPH as a research project (by Noah Snavely and Steve Seitz from the University of Washington, and Richard Szeliski from Microsoft Research), this project impressed me. As an amateur photographer, I've always wanted the ability to feed dozens of pictures into my computer and let it generate a 3D image I could navigate around. If this team can deliver - and deliver it quickly as a part of Microsoft Live — then it'll deliver a few very compelling points. Innovation lives at Microsoft, and Live provides a way for it to get out. Live can compete with a lot of other Internet-based computing models.

This technology can be extremely valuable, not just for photographers, but also for anyone who looks at pictures or needs to communicate graphically or analyze information visually. We need to go beyond the bullet-slide metaphor of PowerPoint and the expanding list model of various reporting tools into more-effective ways to communicate and visualize. Technologies such as those contained in Photosynth could be the start of some new ways of doing this.

So, why would Microsoft give this away via Live? Because it can make more money in the long term providing cloud-based services than it can by selling perpetual use licenses. Do you believe that?

Do you think Microsoft is serious about making Live its leadership platform?

Submit a Comment | Permalink

Absolutely.
The complexity of the desktop is forcing applications into a virtual space, see the rise of softricity and other technologies to stream/remotely deliver applications.
User experience is being pushed ahead with things like Ajax, and the rise of broadband everywhere is making it feasible for most applications to be delivered in a 'Live' fashion.

Imaging your tools were upgraded whenever you wanted them to be, and you never needed to pay for functionality you never use. Sound good? Sounds like just down the road to me.

Microsoft will also push Live to try and get the piracy of their products under control. If it's no longer economically viable to produce hundreds of thousands of pirate copied CD's because people can get the same functionality via the web, why would you?

Expect to see more 'component' based updates from Microsoft being pushed out as service packs or service updates, that'll signify the true move to 'pay-what-you-use' and the really commercially viable 'Live' offering.