There are several panorama apps available for the iPhone, each with different levels of ease with capturing an expansive view of a particular room. Photosynth stands out as you can capture images not just along a horizontal line, but in all directions - up, down, left and right. And rather than just relying on you to hold the camera steady while you pan, the app gives you guidelines of where the next image should be places and next photo snapped.

The processing is done pretty quickly, and images are stored locally but can also be shared to Facebook.

Even more interesting than sharing with friends via Facebook is the ability to share to Bing Maps. This means that others will be able to view your panoramas on maps and in search results for the particular location you've captured.

The app is free, and is only available on iPhone at the moment. Look for it on Windows Phones when the new "Mango" operating system arrives this fall.

What is Photosynth?

Photosynth was launched last August and allows users to automatically stitch multiple photos to create an immersive 3D experience. The service made its most prominent appearance in the mainstream media in January, when it was used by CNN to crowdsource a massive 3D view of Barack Obama's inauguration.

Thanks to Silverlight, Photosynth is Now Available for All (even Mac users)

A few weeks ago, Microsoft switched the Photosynth viewer from a browser plugin to a Silverlight application, which removed a major hurdle for the widespread use of Photosynth. This also finally opened up Photosynth for Mac users as well. Sadly, though, the Photosynth desktop client, which is needed to actually create new synths, is not available for OSX yet.

New Features: Highlights and Privacy Controls

In addition to the new player, Microsoft also recently introduced a number of other interesting features. You can now, for example, highlight key images in your synths, and Microsoft also finally introduced privacy controls, so that your synth is not always available to the public by default.

Synths on a Map

While regular end-users won't get the same benefits as Microsoft's commerical partners, Microsoft already allowed users to browse geotagged synths directly on a Virtual Earth map and Microsoft already highlights some synths in its Live Maps application.

The Photosynth project is being run in conjunction with CNN.com as part of their "The Moment" sub-site.

"We'll take your photos from every angle, combine them with CNN's professional shots, and produce what we hope will be an amazing experience that will be shown live on CNN. And you thought the Jessica Yellin hologram was cool! The synth will also be available for everyone to see on CNN.com."

To participate:

1. Take one photo of the moment when Obama takes the oath. If you have a digital camera with a zoom lens, take three photos (wide-angle, mid-zoom, full-zoom)

2. E-mail each photo as soon as possible to themoment@cnn.com (one photo per message, 10MB size limit). Don't forget to include your name in the message if you'd like to appear in the list of the contributors. Please only send in photos you took yourself.

3. Go to cnn.com/themoment to see all of the photos in our photosynth

The good news? Anyone with a digital camera can participate and take part in recording history. In addition to the Photosynth project, all of the photos will also be shared via iReport. Then, there's the bad news. If you want to see the finished work in all its glory, you have to have access to a Windows machine. Photosynth is only fully supported support Vista and XP currently. But they do offer an experimental Silverlight-based Photosynth player for other platforms. (I used the experimental viewer and it worked very well.)

If you're planning to be in attendance at the inauguration, bring your camera. Otherwise, stay tuned to CNN.com The Moment and Photosynth for the results of this experiment.

(Photo credit Joe Crimmings Photography. Used under Creative Commons.)