If this sounds a lot like Microsoft Photosynth, that’s because, to an extent, it is Microsoft Photosynth—except instead of constructing scenes, this revamped version constructs entire cities.

Researchers at the University of Washington’s Graphics and Imaging Laboratory, which crunched a lot of the code behind the original Photosynth, have devised new algorithms that scale the photo-cloud-to-3D-model concept way, way up:

The key difference is that Photosynth was aimed at doing a single monument or landmark, which meant that it was scaled to a couple hundred or a thousand photographs, after which it became too slow. We can now process truly huge data sets — the big breakthrough here was being able to match the images fast.

To these lab-sheltered folks, fast means “about a day”, in which time they were able to render all manner of scenes, from the Trevi Fountain and the Colosseum in Rome, and the entire Old City in Dubrovnik, video’d above.

The best thing about this is that the U of W team doesn’t have to worry about anything beyond their algorithms—once they’ve perfected the software that can recognise and arrange these images, they can slap together a 3D rendering of pretty much any location that Flickr users have taken a few thousand pictures of. [PopSci]

Tick Talk Robot: In the mornings of the future, humanoid, quasi-British, deep-voiced robots will lull you with a reading of the day’s news, stroke your hair and breathe fragrant, bacon-scented air across your cheek until you wake. Until then, there’s Tick Talk Robot, which does pretty much the same thing, except without all the roboculinary eroticism. $2.49.

AppButler: This isn’t quite as cool as the press materials make it out to be, but it’s still not a bad idea, considering how much easier it is to arrange apps with iTunes 9. As it stands now—as a web app—AppButler gives you a bunch of free icons to place on your springboard as dead links, which act as labels (News, Productivity, Music, whatever) for your apps, so you can make interesting homescreen layouts. A native version—whatever that would look like—is mired in the approval process as we speak.

Riddim Ribbon: A new concept rhythm game showed off at Apple’s iPod event this week, Riddim Ribbon shoots your avatar/ball/blob/thing down a pathway, on which you have to hit lots and lots of targets. The more you hit, the more the song builds; the fewer, the sparser the instrumentation gets. This one comes out in October, unfortunately.

Fantasy Sports Stats Grabber: Aggregates cross-league stats in a Fantasy-league-friendly way, so you can keep closer track of how much money you’ve lost to your coworkers in this bizarre ritual of manhood that I’ll never, ever understand. $1.19.

Flickr: Better late than never, Yahoo. At least the app is good at what it does, which includes uploading and geotagging photos, and managing your account. Warning: It can be sluggish, especially when loading thumbs. That’s nothing to get too worked up about though, seeing as this one’s a freebie.

Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor: You play a spider with an extremely overactive web gland, and hop around a bunch of levels, trapping bugs and solving mysteries. The demo video at the app’s website makes a better case for playing this lovely little game than I can, but I will say this: Spider game, I love you. $3.99.

This list is in no way definitive. If you’ve spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here. Have a great weekend, everybody.

At heart, this is a fairly basic photo uploading app: Logging in brings you to an account management dashboard, where you can browse your photos as well as your friends’, and search Flickr as a whole. It’s quite a bit like their web interface, except with all the hallmark advantages of a native app, i.e. a more responsive interface, and direct camera integration, with geotagging.

The app seems to have a tendency to slow down while thumbnails are loading, and there’s no way to zoom in on photos within the app, but hey, this thing’s free—and there are still plenty of alternatives in the App Store if it doesn’t quite do it for you. [Flickr via Techcrunch]

I to admit that I used to tote my DSLR or a point-and-shoot everywhere, and now I don’t thanks to the iPhone. Whenever I need a snap, I just take out the iPhone and fire away. I miss the quality and flexibility of my real cameras. And I really wish the iPhone had a camera as fast and good as a nice point-and-shoot. And I really really REALLY wish for instant camera access and a physical shutter button. But even with all those missing features, it’s oh-so-much more convenient. And most of the time — I hate it sometimes — I just care about the moment.

On top of that, once I started using the iPhone like a Lomo or a Holga — having CameraBag helps — and just catch whatever was going on, I stopped worrying about megapixels, aperture and ISO settings. So I’m not surprised about the Flickr phenomenon. [LA Times via PocketLint]

To add your photos to the Flickr pool, just upload your pics to Flickr, click here to join the group and then start sending the photos to the group from your Flickr home page.

We want as many awesome gadget photos as you can take, so don’t be shy adding them. It doesn’t have to be only gadgets either – If you taken a truly breathtaking photo, or you’ve shot something completely random and funny, send it in to share with your fellow Gizmodians.

[Giz AU Flickr Pool]

Full details are here. It’s super easy and increases your chances of getting laid. Okay, I made that last part up, but we still want you to send us your pics…

[Gizmodo Flickr Pool]

It’s as easy as mocking k-Rudd’s street cred: All you need to do is be signed up to Flickr, then click here and then start hitting the “Send to Group” button on the individual pics you want to share with us.

Now, what type of photos do we want from you?

First of all, anything gadgety. That’s why you’re here, after all. Send us pics of your phones both old and brand new, your ultimate home theatre setup, your modded PCs, your oldschool Walkman collection or anything else you know we’d love.

Add to that any cool advertising you might see (preferably for something gadgety, but not restricted to that), cool stuff you see on the street, things that you reckon could be our Image of the Day, or anything else that is randomly cool. That doesn’t mean your entire collection of Fluffy, your Nanna’s new puppy. But if Fluffy happens to have an obsession with mobile phones, send in the evidence!

So come on – start sharing!

[Giz AU Flickr Pool]

The White House just put up a Flickr Stream (291 photos uploaded yesterday, 1 uploaded today) of their comings and goings. These are some pretty good shots.

If you can’t get enough of your Obamas and Bidens and Emanuels and presidential dogs, look no further. If not, look at little further.

Also, if you’ve got one of those digital picture frames with Flickr support, you can probably hook up your frame to directly feed photos from the White House stream and pretend you’re some kind of secret agent or witch, being able to see their every move. [Flickr]

The national maps—like the one above, which shows the most photographed landmark in each of the top 20 most photographed cities—are somewhat predicable, with photo density at its highest around population centres, especially large, scenic ones. Natural sights, like the Grand Canyon, make a strong showing, and the results generally support my theory that most peoples’ vacations consist of trudging to a location of note, snapping a photo to prove that, yes, they actually went, and going directly back home, depressed.

The results get much more interesting at a local level. On the left are New York City and San Francisco, which were the first and third most photographed cities, respectively. Popular tourist destinations are prominently featured on these maps, but in addition the increased density of photos between these destinations form a sort of photo “track” along which tourists, apparently anxious for lack of monument-type things to photograph, take pictures anyway.

Researchers are said to be mulling the possibility of constructing some kind of online travel guide from the wisdom of the photo-taking crowd. Regarding that “wisdom”: Apple’s Manhattan cube store, a place that sells iPods, is the 5th most photographed place in NYC—just in front of the Statue of Liberty, which probably welcomed your ancestors to this country. What now, James Surowiecki?

Read the full report here (WARNING: there’s math). [Physorg]

As you probably know, iPhoto’s facial recognition feature likes to spot visages in odd places. Like a ball of cookie dough that looked like a panda. Now, there’s a place for even more delightful mistakes.

The Things iPhoto Thinks Are Faces group already has 86 screen captures in its pool, which I’m sure is going to grow. And by the looks of it, iPhoto is as keen on seeing faces in mountains, piles of rocks and at the bottom of an empty glass as the most superstitious astrological devotee. Or Virgin-Mary-in-Toast spotter.

[Things iPhoto Thinks Are Faces - Flickr, gallery credits: ruudvaneijk, maczydeco, edu Mac nation, Daragh, iafroman, bgmb42, bgmb42-1, bgmb42-2, bgmb42-3 - Thanks, Jimbo!]