That is all changing this week. On Monday, Microsoft announced a Photosynth app for the iPhone that lets users snap multiple still images in rapid succession. Meanwhile, Boston-based Everyscape plans to announce later on Wednesday a free iPhone app called Uscapeit that builds an immersive view from video clips taken in a particular manner.

Such photography, says Everyscape CEO Jim Schoonmaker, lets someone experience what it was like to be somewhere as opposed to just see a glimpse of the scene.

“It’s a much more emotive sense of content,” Schoonmaker said.

The new iPhone apps join Occipital, which pioneered the category with its 360 Panorama app for capturing panoramic views.

Each app takes a somewhat different approach and has its pros and cons as far as ease of use and quality.

Occipital’s approach is perhaps the easiest, allowing users to slowly pan around as they see on screen what they have captured and what remains. The downside is that this can lead to seams as well as some repeats of anything that is moving in the image.

Photosynth works by letting a user take multiple still images that can be stitched together to create the panorama. Unlike a Photosynth made on the desktop, however, users can see what it is they are capturing and how well it is overlapping with what they already have. Also, Photosynth can capture almost all the area around a camera, meaning you can see not only all the way around, but also up and down, provided you take the time to get all the necessary shots.

Uscapeit, meanwhile, builds its image off of a video clip that is uploaded to a cloud-based server system that renders the panorama. The downside is that the user can’t tell how well (or if at all) their image is coming out until they get the results several minutes later. There were several occasions when I learned only belatedly that my images hadn’t uploaded at all.

They also vary in the ways in which one can share the captured image. Occipital makes it easy to tweet or e-mail a link, but has yet to integrate Facebook sharing, which is included in both the other new entrants.

Microsoft has been telegraphing its plans to enter the area for awhile, having shown last year a plan for integrating panoramas into the Bing iPhone app.

Everyscape, meanwhile, has been at this for eight or nine years. In the past, it focused on certifying professional photographers to shoot the footage needed to scape the interiors of restaurants, hotels and other spots. The company already has several city dining guides using those professionally made images.

However, the company has long aimed to get the technology in more hands, Schoonmaker said. Over time, the company wants to expand to Android phones and even allow those with just a camcorder to upload their footage via the Web. That, Schoonmaker said, should allow its technology to reach far wider than approaches that rely on smartphones.

“We want to get to hundreds of millions,” Schoonmaker said. “That’s really when big things happen. I don’t know how many iPhones there are in India or parts of Africa.”

To get a sense for each of the apps, here are shots I did of the old school Taco Bell in Palo Alto using both Occipital and Photosynth. Sadly, my Uscapeit version there didn’t turn out, but the company has several good examples of what it can do on its Web site.

While time will tell which approach and results people appreciate most, the early winner here is Apple, whose iPhone now has several options in a category of photography in which most of its rivals don’t have a single program.

That’s supposed to change next month, when the site adds a new “In Focus” photo blog, curated by Alan Taylor. The assumption is that Taylor will be doing something very similar to the work he has been doing at the Boston Globe’s site, where his “Big Picture” site has been averaging eight million page views a month.

It’s fairly easy to describe what Taylor does: He grabs brilliant images–culled from Getty, Reuters and the Associated Press, as well as from a personal network of photographers–and assembles them on a no-frills site. But it’s impossible to describe the photos’ impact, so best to take a minute and see the work he’s been doing at Boston.com.

Back? Okay. Now, head over to check out a few of Gawker Media’s beta sites, which showcase the blog network’s upcoming emphasis on big, pretty pictures.

Again, hard to really appreciate how good this stuff can look on a lot of browser windows, but if you’ve got a big enough display–or more interestingly, if you’re looking at this stuff on a TV screen on your wall, or your iPad screen on your lap–you’ll get the full effect. Which is: This stuff doesn’t really look much like the Web–it looks like TV.

And that’s sort of the point.

This is going to be good.

The iconic singer and performance artist Lady Gaga will be appearing at the Consumer Electronics Show later today to unveil “creations” she came up with for Polaroid.

Gaga announced last year here that she had been named the creative director of Polaroid.

As part of the collaboration that will debut her Polaroid “Grey Label” project, Gaga said a year ago that she would be coming up with “prototypes in marrying the fields of fashion/technology/photography innovation.”

Oh, goody. Fishnet stockings that can post pictures to Instagram!

I am considering going to the event–as ordered to by the shy and retiring Hollywood agent Ari Emanuel.

But it will likely be a mosh pit of nerdy dudes, so I’ll need to frontload starting at 10 am.

And you can watch it on Polaroid.com at 3:30 pm PT.

The money, doled out via 500 $1,000 credits to photography mecca B&H Photo, is meant to reward some of YouTube’s most popular content providers. And it’s supposed to remind people how fruitful it can be to provide YouTube with good content.

Google’s video site usually does that by other means. For instance, it is happy to point out that members of its “Partner” program can now make real money–in some cases, a full-time living or even more–by supplying YouTube with popular clips.

But YouTube’s most public embrace of its partners will happen if the video site ends up acquiring Next New Networks, a Web video producer/distributor dedicated to putting out low-cost, high-view videos, like the ones featuring Obama Girl or the Bed Intruder. That is, exactly the kind of videos that YouTube is rewarding with today’s handouts.

News of the sale talks were first reported in the New York Times last week. And at the time, I’d assumed that YouTube was going to be able to buy Next New at a bargain basement price, in large part because the start-up is on its third CEO in three years.

But people familiar with the company tell me that if it does sell to Google, investors who have put in $26 million will get at least a decent return on their investment. So we’re looking at something in the $50 million range at a minimum, perhaps much more.

YouTube is Next New Networks’ primary distribution partner, which makes the proposed deal a bit of a head-scratcher for some: Why pay for stuff you’re already getting?

But YouTube apparently thinks it is worth its while to lock in that content pipeline. And it’s willing to spend a whole lot more than $500,000 to get it done.

Here’s one of the YouTube partners getting $1,000 worth of new equipment: “MysteryGuitarMan,” in a clip he put out last month that has since garnered almost 1.5 million views.

One feature, in particular, caught my eye. It’s the ability to take panoramic pictures just by waving the phone (and its built-in camera) around a bit. The result is a multidimensional Photosynth. People will be able to create panoramas for their own use or to share with friends, but Microsoft is also hoping that people will share them publicly and that some of them can be used to expand Bing Maps’ close-up capabilities.

Microsoft is also updating the Bing app with improved street-level photography options when using maps on the phone. Another new feature will allow the app to use the camera to capture and then read text, using any of the words it recognizes as the basis for a query. Also interesting is the ability to set the app to take action–such as check-in to a location-based service–when you reach a specified location.

Since the demos didn’t work so well for reporters on Wednesday, I offered Microsoft’s Blaise Agueras y Arcas a do-over and he was kind enough to give a demo for Mobilized and answer a few questions (see video below).

Although Microsoft didn’t outline it at the search event, the company is also making a series of updates to its Android app.

One side effect of the coming updates (which Agueras y Arcas said is coming very soon) is that it will actually further the gap between the iPhone and Windows Phone 7. That’s because Bing is not an app on Windows Phone 7, but an integrated part of the operating system. That means that the new Bing features won’t show up until the next OS update, at the earliest.

Microsoft, though, can ill-afford to cede the iPhone search market to Google. The Bing app, it notes, has been downloaded 5.5 million times, while the company has also finally managed to make Bing a search option in the browser.

It’s an issue that is likely to crop up repeatedly for Microsoft, unless it does something like create a separate Bing app for Windows Phone in addition to the built-in search capabilities, something that Microsoft officials held out as a possibility, though nothing is in the works at the moment.

Here is the video of Agueras y Arcas demoing the new features for Mobilized: