The 360 degree views of real estate listings were remarkable for their time, but are giving way to new technology that lets users look at many things at once, says Microsoft Live Labs Technical Fellow Gary Flake, who was speaking last week at Inman’s Real Estate Connect in San Francisco.
“We’re used to Web navigating from one image to another,” especially with video games, says Flake. Microsoft’s PhotoSynth technology lets users zoom in and out of backyards to bedrooms etc. It is the same technology used by CNN for the Obama Inauguration, he notes.
Indeed, Photo Synth, combined with Pivot, a program for collecting information, creates new experiences and allows you to embed them within your own Website. “It will make you want to change the ways you take photos to take into how you stitch together hundreds of things,” says Flake.