Having released Photosynth for commercial use Microsoft  have now announced their commercial terms making it clear how this technology can be used.

Using Photosynth

As long as the synths embedded in a website comply with the terms of use, are publicly available and use under 20GB of storage they are free. If you want to make your synths private (not listed on the photosynth website) you can ‘unlist’ them but this comes with some restrictions. Unlisted synths are limited to 1GB of storage (it is 20GB for public synths) and synth views (when a view opens a synth) are limited to 500 per month. If the way you use photosynth exceeds or is likely to exceed these limits you will need a photosynth commercial license.

Benefits of a commercial License

• All the benefits of unlisted synths (not listed on the photosynth website or indexed by search engines)
• Unlimited synth storage
• Unlimited synth views

Synth views are counted as Microsoft Virtual Earth billable transactions. Microsoft track how many synth views are used and charge accordingly.

Photosynth has many applications in the commercial market. For example, Earthware client London Property specialists Residential Land are using it in the Virtual Earth property maps to give internal tours of their available properties.

Happy synthing!