Microsoft Seadragon Mobile Provides Deep Zooming For Apple iPhone

By: Mary Couchman
Staff Writer
Published: Dec 15, 2008

Microsoft Live Labs has announced Seagradon Mobile for the Apple iPhone. The new mobile application lets users browse through an entire collection of photos from a single screen.

Microsoft Corp has released its Seadragon Mobile application for Apple Inc's iPhone. The Microsoft Live Labs applications is not yet available for the Windows Mobile platform. Which seems a bit ironic.

"Seadragon Mobile brings the same smooth image browsing you get on the PC to the mobile platform," Microsoft said on its Live Labs blog.

The application fixes a problem that most mobile phones have. The ability to quickly zoom in on photos without losing clarity. In fact, zooming in on large high-resolution photos on the iPhone is slow.

Seadragon Mobile fixes all that. It lets users zoom in quickly, including an aerial map of the world, and even documents from the Library of Congress.

"Get super-close in on a map or photo, with just a few pinches or taps of your finger. Browse an entire collection of photos from a single screen," Microsoft said.

The Microsoft Silverlight media player uses the Seadragon zoom technology. For example, visitors to the Hard Rock Cafe's memorabilia site, which uses Silverlight, can zoom in on any piece of memorabilia in the collection. It zooms rapidly and response is quick.

The Seadragon app also lets users add their own photos and then presumably zoon in. For the Apple iPhone, this is a very good mobile application.