Microsoft Codename Max is dead. Whatever it was it is no more. It took me some Googling to find out:

With just a few clicks, you can create lists of your favorite photos, arrange them in the layout of your choice, and express them in beautiful views. Preview your photo lists as you build them until your presentation is perfect. You can even use our super hot 3D Mantle View to really show off your work!

A competitor to Aperture? But they have iView. A slide show application? But there are dozens of these, free, open source, Java, Flash, everything.

Maybe it was hard to find out anything because this product is not a product:

Microsoft® Codename Max is not like any other product. That's because it's not a product—it's your opportunity to try an exciting new user experience from Microsoft. Today Max lets you make lists of your photos and turn them into beautiful slide shows to share with your family and friends. Tomorrow...who knows?

With just a few clicks, you can create lists of your favorite photos, arrange them in the layout of your choice, and express them in beautiful views. Preview your photo lists as you build them until your presentation is perfect. You can even use our super hot 3D Mantle View™ to really show off your work!

Max makes it easy to share your memories with friends and family around the world. You can send any photo list to your friends so they can view the photos in your desired presentation. When you update the list, they get the new photos automatically. You just need a Microsoft Passport® network (or MSN® Hotmail) account.

Max looks and acts differently than programs you've used before. Microsoft's next-generation WinFX technology is built into Max, which allows you to create stunning visualizations of your pictures, and share and update them with your friends and family automatically.

It's proprietary, that's for sure. It does what iPhoto does with photocasting. It's a duplicate of Flickr maybe? Honestly it is hard to see what the value is here when there are so many existing solutions to this "problem". Email still works for me.

Tags: Microsoft, Pigs With Lipstick, iView, Aperture