Filed under: Software, Cool tools, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch
Seadragon for iPhone. Golly!
Did hell freeze over? Microsoft Live Labs has released Seadragon Mobile [app store link] for the iPhone/iPod touch. It's free and available now for iPhone and iPod touch, but surprisingly Seadragon Mobile is not currently available for the Windows Mobile platform.Seadragon Mobile is a viewer, based on very cool Microsoft technology, that allows you to look at gigapixel images while you smoothly zoom in for more and more detail. The app provides some interesting samples like world maps that let you zoom down to photos of your backyard. (Google Maps does this as well, but not this smoothly or rapidly.) You can browse works of art, or explore in detail the structure of galaxies and nebula. It is hard to describe how compelling this process is. You have to see it and use it to get the full effect.
Microsoft is providing Seadragon Mobile as a technology demonstration on the iPhone, and it is clear there is tremendous potential here. Microsoft hints that a person could combine all the digital images they have ever taken, and create a virtual single page that lets you zoom down to the pixel level in any one image. The demo files in Seadragon Mobile demonstrate just that ability.
The release of Seadragon Mobile for the iPhone begs the question: why hasn't it been released for Windows Mobile phones? Our own Christina Warren points out that because Windows Mobile software runs on a multiplicity of hardware, it would be tough to make a general release. On the iPhone & iPod touch, there is one consistent hardware and software platform. Seadragon Mobile also gets quite a boost from the touchscreen gestures inherent in the iPhone that simply can't be done as smoothly on other phones. It's also true that not all Windows Mobile phones have a graphic engine powerful enough to gracefully handle the images Seadragon Mobile delivers.
Microsoft hasn't released a desktop version of Seadragon for the Mac, and Mac owners can't create these gigantic images yet. Making your own deep images requires using either Windows XP or Vista. (Boot Camp should do the trick.)
Seadragon Mobile is a great demonstration of what the iPhone can do, and is sure to get some gasps and gadget lust from owners of other smartphones.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
TJ said 12:11PM on 12-15-2008
I live in portland, which i call hell and it froze over last night. so i guess hell did freeze over
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Jesse said 12:22PM on 12-15-2008
Cool logo. Catchy name. Impressive technology. A Microsoft win all around; they even one-upped The Google!
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ack154 said 12:26PM on 12-15-2008
From CNET:
"The iPhone is the most widely distributed phone with a (graphics processing unit)," Alex Daley, group product manager for Microsoft Live Labs, told TechFlash. "Most phones out today don't have accelerated graphics in them. The iPhone does and so it enabled us to do something that has been previously difficult to do."
There's your "why not WinMo?" answer.
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tuaw said 12:46PM on 12-15-2008
Hm. Am I the only one that doesn't get what the big deal here is? Zooming in on high-res images seems fairly tame -- they just push you more pixels as you need them. I'm playing with the iPhone app and I'm not seeing the big potential here.
With respect to "combining all of your digital photos", zooming in on them seems like the easy part. There are much more difficult problems to make that vision happen that seem potential unsolvable or impractical.
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Jesse said 2:04PM on 12-15-2008
This isn't simply zooming. There is more going on under the hood. Having a multigigabyte image of, say the world, and zooming down on it without having to refresh the screen or load things in grids, a la Google maps, is pretty cool. Not to mention allowing you to work with huge images with little RAM usage.
TheGeek said 1:30PM on 12-15-2008
But, in typical Microsoft fashion they shipped a broken app.
http://blogs.computerworld.com/microsoft_iphone_app_ships_broken_and_proprietary_expectations_met
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philipp.eigenmann said 1:52PM on 12-15-2008
Is it just me or doesn't this app work in 1st gen iPhones? I get the message, this app cannot be installed on this iPhone...
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allan marcus said 2:10PM on 12-15-2008
isn't this just zoomify? http://www.zoomify.com/
Cool that it's on the iPhone, but it ain't new.
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Jason said 2:44PM on 12-15-2008
Screw Boot camp. VMWare Fusion, Parallels, or VirtualBox will do you even better.
;)
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badtzmaru said 5:06PM on 12-15-2008
I downloaded this yesterday and got bored quickly. I guess I am Jaded (tm)
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billoy said 5:54PM on 12-15-2008
Oh it worked so good, in fact once installed I quit receiving any phone calls and text messages. Everything magically started working again once I removed the app. I'm surprised it didn't blue screen my iPhone.
Ugh.
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monkey said 3:25AM on 12-16-2008
you guys really have to see the TED talk about this, its amazing technology:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/blaise_aguera_y_arcas_demos_photosynth.html
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Preston said 1:15PM on 12-17-2008
I dunno about you guys, but i'd easily pay $100 for a well put together suite of Microsoft Office for iPhone
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John Todd said 5:04PM on 12-30-2008
I really loved the "canned" TED presentation (even though it wasn't actually completely "canned") but the iPhone app is enough to make me laugh out loud at how poorly this roll-out was handled. As if they needed to give Apple product owners any more hilarity at how inept Microsoft was! Seriously, if you can't roll out a working app on enemy territory, don't try the invasion. The app crashed, and/or completely refused to acknowledge that it was connected to the Internet. What were they thinking? I'll most likely not give much credence to the Seadragon/Photosynth stuff for a while yet, or at least until some other company takes up the development role.
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iest said 6:56PM on 1-10-2009
I'm actually impressed Microsoft sucked up their pride and released some software for an "enemy" platform.
I'm usually the first person to slate Microsoft for the products they make - but this is only because 99% of it is absolute garbage.
Seadragon Mobile is actually a very nice piece of software.
It's nice and fast, simple interface. Very pleasing to use.
Maybe all Microsoft needs is a bit of guidance (i.e. strict iPhone SDK guidelines) from Apple to make quality software... Interesting
Nice job, Microsoft.
Never thought I'd see the day I'd ever say that... Although the original Xbox was good...
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