Get ready for Microsoft?s entry on to the image manipulation market. The company this month unveiled its Photosynth software, which converts two-dimensional images into three-dimensional models.

Manipulating 3D models creates all sorts of opportunities for a wide range of businesses, including real estate agents, architects and online retailers, who might want customers to see a product from all sides.

Microsoft expects to release Photosynth later this year, but gave the tech crowd a sampling of what the software can do, at the Siggraph 2006 conference in Boston. The conference ended on August 2.

Photosynth was created is a collaboration between Microsoft and two researchers at the University of Washington. Here is how it works, according to their description published on the Photosynth site. The program processes a series of images of the same subject. Photosynth takes the collection of images, analyses them for similarities, and then displays them as a reconstructed 3D image.

Each photo is processed by computer vision algorithms to extract hundreds of distinctive features, like the corner of a window frame or a door handle. When a feature is found in multiple images, the software calculates its 3D position, in much the same manner that the information from your two eyes allow the brain to position things through depth perception.

?Photosynth?s 3D model is just the cloud of points showing where those features are in space,? the researchers say.

Users can then enter the virtual space of the image or see photos from any angle. As they envisage the program, Photosynth could connect all your photographs into a seamless web of images and information, allowing you to browse a virtual universe of interconnected scenes that constantly evolves and changes over time.

They believe photo-sharing websites will be early-adopters of this technology. Just think of the possibilities for tourism websites.

For more information visit the Photosynth site at http://labs.live.com/photosynth. Interestingly, a fine art photographer already has the www.photosynth.com domain. Wonder if this means he will soon be coming into a lot of money if Microsoft wants to snag the domain?

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The man who started with one red paperclip available for trade on the Internet has worked his way up to gaining a house in Kipling, Saskatchewan. Kyle MacDonald started with one red paperclip on July 12, 2005. After a lot of media publicity, including from this column, and 14 trades later, the town of Kipling saw a marketing opportunity.

On July 12 this year the townsfolk agreed to hand over a house located at 503 Main Street. Kipling got in return a role in a film produced by Corbin Bernsen, the actor who co-owns Public Media Works, a company that develops entertainment for targeted fan bases.

He directed and starred in Carpool Guy, the company?s first film targeted at soap opera fans.

You might have seen Bernsen, whose greatest fame came from his role on L.A. Law.

As it happens Bernsen is an obsessive collector of snow globes. He traded a role in a film to MacDonald for a KISS snow globe. Go to http://oneredpaperclip.blogspot.com to see how the paperclip got transformed into a house. Incredible.

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It?s a shame he did it, but Stephen Colbert, who hosts TV?s Comedy Channel?s nightly show The Colbert Report, has done Wikipedia and its users a service. He has also rightly made a point about history and ?facts?, which should appeal to the philosophical among us.

Late last month Colbert caused chaos for Wikipedia by urging viewers to deface the online encyclopaedia. He called on them to insert made-up ?facts? into the collaborative online encyclopaedia.

Wikipedia is an open source creation. Anyone who wants to help create reference guides on any subject can contribute. The encyclopaedia?s accuracy is maintained by a core group of creators, who help to weed out the accurate from the inaccurate. Anyone can challenge claims made on any particular subject.

It has evolved as a very useful reference guide. I have used it on many occasions, although I always check through the linked references at the bottom of each subject page.

Last month Colbert decided to point out some of Wikipedia?s flaws. Colbert pointed out to viewers that since any user can change any entry, and if enough other users agree with them, it then becomes ?true?.

He then announced the invention of a new word: ?wikiality?, a useful word for the Internet age.

Wikiality is based on the premise that if enough people believe a certain untruth to be true, then it becomes a fact on the Internet and can then take on a life of its own. As an example, he told readers to insert the claim into Wikipedia that the population of elephants in Africa has tripled over the last six months.

Wikipedia was forced to lock down its pages on Africa after they were repeatedly altered to state this choice piece of falsehood. It?s a good point, and one that Wikipedia will have to address now it has been brought into the open.