A long, long time ago I recommended a fantastic service called PhotoSynth, a service now sadly departed to the great bit bucket in the sky.
Here’s the story of how the service flamed to greatness before dying to embers.
Photosynth.net was an application that made it possible for users to capture the world in 3D using two types of tools: panoramas and synths. Having started as a research project of a University of Washington student, Photosynth was later developed by Microsoft.
If you try to find Photosynth.net today, it doesn’t take long before you receive the message, “This site can’t be reached” because “www.photosynth.net’s server IP address could not be found.” You can check your connection, proxy, firewall, and DNS configuration followed by running the Windows network diagnostic tool, but the problem will not be resolved.
What could have happened to Photosynth.net, the website that Time Magazine once named one of the 50 best websites of 2009? We took some time to find out by following the site’s history, the service it provided, and some of its notable achievements.