Microsoft ICE

I played with some 2 years back and I am a bit surprised it is still around, got more functions and it is still free to use. You can download it from
Of course, it is nicely embedded into the Microsoft landscape, it will work only on Windows and requires Silverlight and Photosynth if you want to publish the panorama on PhotoSynth. But you are still free to create panoramas and just save it to your harddisk.

• Download it
  
  
  
• Install and use it (simple workflow)
  
  
  
• Optional download PhotoSynth and publish it
  
  
  
  
  

Remarks:

• I usually dont like solutions that lock you to a specific framework or product, but ICE is a nice simple application with enough functionality for beginners and it allows to save you work as a separate file.
• I dont know why the upload function forces you to upload the un-cropped panorama.

Test Result online:

New Stitching application

During the last few years a couple of image stitching applications appeared on the scene and most of them matured well, means upgrades with faster performance, more functionality, better results and so on. Just to name a few (at leats these ones I ever used):

Panorama Factory (link)
Autopano Pro (link)
PTGui (link)
Hugin (link)

Today I prefer to work with PTGui with a truckload of manual functionality, as well superb results in auto-mode.

Btw, the Gigapan system is "shipped" with a stitcher as well. (link)

Microsoft Research just launched another new stitcher (ICE, Image Composite Editor) in the neighborhood of Deepzoom Composer and co. I just gave it a try and the results are pretty good. I will continue to test.

Some more info (link)
Download (link)