Fast-forward to the end. "It's quite feasible to run the synthing software right on your local machine," says Flake. Aha! So this isn't actually a Web service at all — it's just more of the same desktop software Microsoft has sold all along, with some Web features added.

Doing so, I learned that three years after Microsoft poached him from his role as head of research at Yahoo, a guy named Gary Flake and his 150-person Live Labs team have come up with a product called Photosynth, which stitches images together to create larger images. But as you can tell by the above image — results for a search on "Mission District, San Franciso"— its search function doesn't really work. Also, none of it works on a Mac.

Disappointing. Not Microsoft's product, which is about what we'd expect from the software giant. No, I'm chastened by the FT. On New York's subway system, the pink paper it's printed on is supposed to signify that one looks down from high even on the guy holding the WSJ to your left. But being seen reading articles like this make one a laughingstock even to Murdoch's masses.