'CSI' sleuths out Microsoft's latest technology

— -- A guidance counselor at a Manhattan prep school is murdered while the prom is taking place in the gymnasium.

Forensic scientists for the New York police attempt to recreate the crime scene by uploading hundreds of camera phone thumbnail photos snapped at the dance onto a computer.

The PC screen fills up in a concentric square pattern, revealing a wide shot of the gym at the center. Investigators can manipulate the images to show close-ups of the scene from every angle.

This episode of the CBS crime drama CSI: NY, scheduled to run Wednesday night, is fiction. But the technology at its core, Microsoft's Photosynth software, is real. It analyzes scores of images for similarities and stitches them into a three-dimensional reconstruction.

CSI creator Anthony E. Zuiker first saw Photosynth, which is due later this year, in July during a tour of Microsoft's research labs in Redmond, Wash.

Zuiker makes regular visits to Redmond as part of an ongoing creative relationship between CSI and Microsoft.

"The partnership for us is very important," Zuiker says. "For us to be able to launch things that haven't quite been in the marketplace or are new, in terms of visual story-telling with technology — to our fans, those bells and whistle are priceless."

Microsoft benefits too, of course, without having to spend money on a traditional 30-second TV commercial. There's dialogue right in the script. A detective tells a suspect, "It's a Microsoft world. I'm just living in it."

Viewers are treated to an early peek at the company's technology — in the case of Photosynth, months prior to its expected year-end consumer launch. (Microsoft is previewing Photosynth at www.labs.live.com/photosynth/.)

"This is truly an example where branded integration can be as powerful, and potentially more powerful, than a 30-second ad," says Alan Gould, co-CEO of IAG Research, which measures the effectiveness of TV advertising. He speculates Microsoft may be "trying to build a coolness factor around a brand — and that takes years."