So what do you do with the million photos everyone took of the inauguration? Here at Emergent Chaos, we believe that we should throw them all in a massive blender, and see what emerges. A massive blender isn’t a very technical description of Photosynth, but it’s not a bad analogy. The project cleverly figures out what information is available from all the photos, creates a massive, three dimensional model, and makes it available. Here’s “The Moment,” hosted by CNN and Microsoft Live Labs, pixelated by my shrinking it down and adding the frame from a screenshot:

I think it’s tremendously cool. There’s no pre-organization. It’s not some massive machine stitching together a gigapixel image from one place. People take photographs chaotically, submit them sporadically, and what emerges is amazing. Why not go explore?

(Disclaimer: I’m pretty sure I’d say the same thing even if I didn’t work for Microsoft.)