Microsoft enters into iPhone application world with Seadragon Mobile

Sun, 12/14/2008 - 5:32am — Seth Weintraub
5362

The world's largest software company today released their first iPhone app dubbed "SeaDragon Mobile".  Seadragon is an application designed to browse high quality imagery and is in the same realm as Microsoft's Photosynth technology.  Get it here (iTunes link).  You can pinch and zoom around gigapixel images surprisingly fast according to Microsoft:

Seadragon has gone mobile.  Now you can try out our first mobile version to see graphics or photos on your iPhone in greater detail than ever before.

Seadragon is designed to provide next-generation visual experiences, regardless of the size of the screen, size of the file or speed of your network.  It's already available on a number of platforms, including Microsoft Surface, and in Photosynth and Silverlight. Now we're bringing that same graphical smoothness right to the iPhone in your pocket.

Create your own content with the Deep Zoom Composer or PhotoZoom and view it on your phone.  Or just look at our sample content. You can also browse Photosynth collections (yours or anybody else's) with just a flick and a pinch.

We will continue to experiment with bringing Seadragon to other platforms as we move forward, exploring different ways to use this functionality to improve the way users explore the digital world. 

Interestingly, Microsoft expects to release more apps in the near future according to their website.

As a Microsoft tech notes below, the browse Photosynth is broken - which is most of the app. So there isn't much to see just yet.  You can still find friends by name and add synths (just not view?!).

Comments

haha, ms's first iphone app,

3135

haha, ms's first iphone app, and its broken at least they're consistent

And where is a version for

3532

And where is a version for windows mobile? probably they don't see a future in supporting that piece of crap.

That name belongs to an open

2846

That name belongs to an open source app, give it back!

Photosynth is a more large-software-companyish name. Something along that line.

Typical Microsoft

2940

They are trying to get you to convert your files to a format they can control. As usual.

Preparing...

3036

MicroSoft is just seeing how an App Store is efficiently done, how an SDK is properly issued for developers to create and for MS to prepare themselves for their iPhone killer phone release.

Watch out all you WinMob 6 people, your time is almost up!

Photosynth "almost worked" on

2531

Photosynth "almost worked" on Iphone .... but ... what is funny is that OSX leopard is not supported apparently ...if you go to Photosynth.com it'll say that "your OS is not supported .... try VM" HAH!

Well , I might be holding my breath for a more functional MSN messenger (compared to the OSX one) for iphone then.... maybe a game-changer functionality..... offline messaging, YEAH!