Check out the video below of the new iPhone application – Seadragon. This uses some pretty amazing technology, developed from Microsoft Live Labs, only the pixels being displayed are downloaded, rather than the entire massive images. At times these images are over 1 Gigapixel in size.
I did experience some problems with the app, at times some items are unavailable. We’ll have wait and see over the coming days, but I suspect it’s just early teething problems.
While the technology behind this application is pretty ground breaking, perhaps even more ground breaking is the fact this is the first Microsoft published app on the iPhone. It was very open minded of Microsoft to attempt to publish an application in a competitors store, and equally impressive for Apple to approve it.
This actually makes great business sense, offering benefits to both parties. App can bolster the value of the iPhone, while Microsoft gets further penetration of their online services. Let’s hope this is the first of many Windows Live services that make it to the iPhone.
