Microsoft intends to release a system based on research at U Washington to convert people’s photos into navigable worlds. See report on this here.
This application called
Photosynth lets people import photos, either from their own collection or via a search of a photo-sharing site like Yahoo’s Flickr. Drawing from the imported shots, Photosynth organizes the photos into a virtual 3D collage, using an algorithm that measures location information, identifiable features and subsequent 3D points for similarities, differences and viewpoints.
Sounds an interesting thing to do. A good web 2.0 app.
Now this will be very natural for citizer reporting in the context of events also.