Microsoft has launched two interesting Rich Internet Applications these days, unfortunately not based on a standard framework. While Photosynth uses the proprietary Seadragon (aquired in February) libraries, Virtual Earth 3D is also an ActiveX but built with .NET 2.0.

I was expecting an early implementation of WPF/E ( a subset of WPF XAML using JavaScript and being cross-platform), coupled with an easy deployment system – seems that it’s a bit too far away.