Microsoft's Photosynth swamped

Stephen Withers
Friday, 22 August 2008 05:46

Business IT - Technology

Photosynth and its plug-in are currently only available for Windows XP (SP2 or SP3) or Vista. A Mac version is planned, but there's no indication of when it is likely to appear. For now, users report that Photosynth works with VMware Fusion 2 beta 2, even though Microsoft asserts the software can't be used in a virtualised environment.

According to Microsoft, Photosynth works with all DirectX 7 capable video cards, and some DirectX 6 cards. Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2 and 3 are supported.

Both the software and the service are free of charge.

Following this release, Photosynth will move from being a Microsoft Live Labs project to become part of MSN. Microsoft plans to begin using synths of places and events instead of static images on MSN pages, and users will be able to embed synths on web pages (including blogs and social networking sites) much as YouTube videos are currently used.