Its amazing how web-based panoramic image browsing has become such an accepted and normal part of our life: think how accessible Google Streetview, Microsoft's Photosynth and Gigapan are. And this technology hasn't finished changing our world yet: its moving into two new territories.
The first is "indoor streetview" that Google is starting up for businesses. Thanks to RK for bringing this to my attention. Soon you'll be able to invite Google over and get a service setup so that potential customers can browse through images of your small business. Since Google Streetview pushed Google into automated cars (see this link), maybe iRobot needs to start worrying about competition from Google indoor robots? Why stop at businesses, when people already use web-cams to monitor small children from work. Looks like a possible direction for small, portable, low-power visual sensors.
The second direction that panaromic technology is moving toward is stereoscopy. You can find projects to create stereoscopic gigapans and TONS of stereo panoramas on the web. However, these don't actually "work" when you zoom in to see details. Its non-trivial to model the geometry of the scene and re-render 3D images with the right disparity as you closely look at small objects in the scene. MC pointed out that the "right" way to do this would be to capture the light-field at the viewing location. To do this, you would need to smoothly move a video camera in an arc, instead of a stereo pair of still cameras.
Side note on 3D printing: AJ has been working on 3D printer kits that can be assembled for classrooms. Related tools have inspired new kinds of art, as the Nytimes explains.
How long before we have printers that can print printers? The singularity approacheth....
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