Microsoft News Tracker

Microsoft’s Photosynth project today left the lab for the Web and was promptly overloaded which makes it rather difficult to kick the tires, but here’s the announcement from the Live Labs blog:

We’re pleased to announce the first full release of Photosynth, available now at photosynth.com.  Photosynth takes a collection of regular photographs and reconstructs the scene or object in a 3-D environment.  For those of you who have seen the videos or tried our tech preview, you could experience synths that we made in the lab and get a feel for what Photosynth is and how it works.  But now, for the first time ever you can create synths from your own pictures and share them with your friends.  Explore great synths from others or create a few of your own.

The only downside I have seen from the various punters who have already taken it for a spin is that it takes a while to get the hang of taking the number and type of photographs necessary for Photosynth to work its magic. Note that the 3-D environment building all happens online (hence the overload) after you upload your pictures, but Microsoft is providing each user with 20GB of storage.

Photosynth is based on technology Microsoft acquired with Seadragon Software and while it makes a great PR gimmick, there doesn’t appear to be a monetization plan.

Crispin Porter + Bogusky missed the rumored July start date of their $300 million "Microsoft is cool" advertising campaign, but Suzanne Vranica and Robert A. Guth at the WSJ have hints as to what to expect when it finally arrives on September 4th:

Microsoft Corp., weary of being cast as a stodgy oldster by Apple Inc.’s advertising, is turning for help to Jerry Seinfeld.

The software giant’s new $300 million advertising campaign, devised by a newly hired ad agency, has been closely guarded. But Mr. Seinfeld will be one of the key celebrity pitchmen, say people close to the situation. He will appear with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates in ads and receive about $10 million for the work, they say.

It’s always possible that this may be a stroke of genius, but somehow it doesn’t seem promising. Reinforcing that impression is the further rumor that the theme of the campaign is supposedly "Windows, Not Walls" and will stress "connecting people and ideas." I just hope they didn’t talk Mr. Gates into another goofy future digital lifestyle demo like he used to give at CES (cf. 2006 and 2007- they were hyping connected experiences then too), although that might work if they played it for laughs.

I would also observe that the original buzz was that the focus of the campaign was to be all of Microsoft’s consumer products, but this seems to be a Vista exclusive.