This sounds cool:

Via the EET comes word of a new technology called Photosynth, which can stitch together 2D snapshots of a location to build a 3D walkthrough. So for instance, you could do a Google Image or Flickr search for photos of the Eiffel Tower, dump all the resulting photos of the monument into Photosynth, and have the software recreate it and its surroundings in 3D.

This is precisely the kind of hands-on capability we're going to need in order to start building our own virtual worlds based on (or incorporating elements from, or even just inspired by) the world we live in. Okay, granted...It's an early step towards that, but it's a step.