Microsoft Releases Its First iPhone App
Microsoft Corp. has released its first-ever iPhone application ““ a high-resolution photo viewer called Seadragon.
The application was produced by Microsoft’s Live Labs, which works primarily on Web-based technology and applications.
Seadragon thrives upon the iPhone’s powerful graphics processor, allowing users to view giga-pixel sized images.
The app also comes with the Deep Zoom feature, which allows a user to quickly magnify a particular area of a photo, regardless of its size.
Seadragon comes preloaded with a variety of snapshots and bookmarks, including some from the Library of Congress, world maps, large artwork, and user-submitted pictures from Microsoft’s Photosynth — a program that stitches large-scale images together to create a faux 3-D composite.
Microsoft said the aim of the mobile application is to let users view even wall-sized displays on a mobile device, regardless of the amount of bandwidth on the network.
The Seadragon mobile application is available for free to iPhone and iPod Touch users through Apple’s app store via iTunes.
Microsoft didn’t say when Seadragon would be available on other mobile devices or operating systems, including its own Windows Mobile.
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