mashup in a synth

David
Truth is I don't know fully yet! Some of what you say is of interest, so hot spots that link to URL's could pull a visitor from a synth to my web site. Or it would be nice to pop up text boxes as they roll over a hot spot.

It would be cool to mash with presence or communication tools. Say 2 people are exploring the same synth - why let them know they have company? Or I might want to "post a letter" through the front door of a synthed building - translated I mean I send an IM or a web chat request. How about allowing visitors to leave digital graffiti on my synths, this could be feedback or comments about improving a product or service.

Dave

I also like this idea. I think this would be best implemented as some sort of API that allows developers to embed and control synths from within silverlight. This way creative people have control over the direction that it will evolve in, the best of these ideas could be fed back into the official client.
Given this sort of control I guess the first thing I'd do is experiment with navigation options- portals to other synths to switch between areas like inside or outside buildings, a time slider which hides and shows images in a given time range, add live webcam feeds, embed maps and link to wikipedia pages... but that's just me, I'm sure there are thousands of kids out there who will have much better ideas given enough time and the right tools.

Hi Bitplane
Navigating between synths is definately something I'd like to do.I also like the idea of a time slider and being able to see either what has changed with time (maybe it's a building being constructed or a natural environment regenerating) or how time changes the object or place (i.e. a seasonal view).

David - does Photosynth supports the concept of public and private synths? I'm referring to the source material to create a synth, not viewing one. So a public synth is based on images from multiple contributors and a private one is not.

If a synth can be made from multiple contributors, this being a conscious decision to collaborate on creating a synth rather than an image grab from Flickr etc, does anyone think it would be possible to filter the view based on who supplied a set of pictures? My interest in this is a form of change control. Suppose A asked B to change an object, then B adds to a synth to show what has been done.

I seriously doubt that people will be able to really join synths together, you'd need to re-synth from scratch after adding a single photo.

I'm guessing that collaboration will work by making your own synth using a couple of shots from someone else's and then using these shared photos as portals between the two different collections, overlaying several collections at once to make it look like they actually all belong to the same shared synth.

So I guess it shouldn't be hard to just show your collection rather than someone elses, it would just be how it works at present.