InternetStumbling Start For Microsoft's 3D Photo Service

After a slight hiccup at the start, Photosynth is up and running and even Microsoft is curious to see where its users take it.

It wasn't as stumbling a start as the recent launch of the new search engine Cuil, but Microsoft's new photo-stitching service Photosynth did have a rough first day before things smoothed out. The site went dark for a few hours after being overwhelmed by visitors. "The Photosynth site is a little overwhelmed," Microsoft said in a post to the Live Labs blog a day after it launched late last week. "Getting ready for the launch we did massive amounts of performance testing, built capacity model after capacity model, and yet with all of that, you threw so much traffic our way that we need to add more capacity. We are adding that extra horsepower right now and should be back up shortly," said one update on the Synth Blog that started with the word Yikes! Photosynth is a project from Microsoft Research that takes multiple photos and creates a three-dimensional space that lets the user fly "through" the world of the picture, or get a 3D look at an item, such as a car. If a person wants to post a car for sale, instead of posting a few pictures of the car, they can take a multitude of pictures and Photosynth turns it into a three dimensional object that people can walk around and look at from every angle, so long as there are pictures of it. It requires a new way of thinking when it comes to photos, said Joshua Edwards, Photosynth product manager. The first new rule is to take more pictures. "Most of us started in the age of film where you take one picture... [ Read more on www.internetnews.com ]

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