We mentioned previously that the Photosynth team has officially moved into the Virtual Earth Product Group. Today, Sarah Perez on Channel 10 pointed out that Photosynth is now officially integrated with Live Search Maps. Here’s an excerpt:

As you navigate in a map or zoom in or out in a particular location in Live Maps, you can choose to display pushpins for each Photosynth available in that area. You then just click the “launch Photosynth viewer” link to dive in and start exploring those synths.

You can try this now in Seattle, in Cairo at the Sphinx, in Vatican city, or at the Leaning tower of Pisa, for example.

Here are the steps that allow you to find this feature in Live Search Maps, we’ll use the Leaning Tower of Pisa as an example here:

1. Go to Live Search Maps and navigate to any location where synths may be available, try “Paris”
2. Go to Collections > Explore collections to turn on Explore mode and view all user-generated content on Live Search Maps.
   
3. On the left pane, click on the Photosynth button to filter out to display just synths, as shown below:
   
4. You should find a list of the synths available at the location, with the corresponding numbers displayed on the Virtual Earth map. Click on Click to Launch Photosynth Viewer to open the synth.

   

5. Enjoy!