Mark Brown in is blog post CNET article on Google Capturing 3D Data talks about Microsoft's UltraCam that I heard about for the first time at ETech in 2007. At the time they had plans for the next version but even at the time it was the coolest image collection device I had ever seen (and I saw some cool stuff on airplanes when I was in the Navy) if you search on ETech ultracam you will see a lot about that session. With the imagery this camera can produce the Live team built algorithms that allow them to build the 3 dimensional data needed to build the maps that you can see on maps.live.com.

I have a great story about how I discovered that we were producing this type of map\imagery while I was I Devconnections a few years back but you have to buy me a beer or 6 to get it out of me ;).