Rapture

Head on over here. TED's actually a pretty cool conference, so if you browse around you might find more than just this one demo that interests you. Anyway, watch the video, the Seadragon stuff is cool but not the big picture. Photosynth stands to make Minority Report-esque fiction become reality.

Basically, it uses the entire Flickr photo database as reference sheets to "draw" a 3D object. The more photographs tagged toward the specified object, the more accurately Photosynth performs.

I bring this up for two reasons. One, this program presents an example of a mirror world; the 3D models created retain the loctags users had placed specifically on their photos. Photosynth users can then find out details about real-life objects using these tags. Secondly, it represents a perfect combination of social computing and computer processing. Humans accomplish the task of capturing and identifying images, something no computer could do without prior knowledge of the photos' subjects. The computer easily handles the monumental--at least it would be for a human--process of combining all the pictures returned. Each part does something the other can't--working just how I'd like AR to work.

Want to try Photosynth for yourself? Right after the link.