“Microsoft Live Labs today becomes the first group inside the Redmond company to release an application for Apple’s mobile phone,” Todd Bishop reports for TechFlash. “Seadragon Mobile is a free demonstration program meant to test the viability of the high-tech Seadragon photo-display technology on mobile platforms.”
Bishop reports, “Seadragon is best known as a core technology behind Microsoft’s Photosynth photo-browsing program. It’s designed for zooming smoothly in, out and around photos over the Internet, regardless of bandwidth constraints or image size. Seadragon’s technological trick is to store images in multiple resolutions and deliver only the bits needed to present the view a user wants at any given moment.”
“So why release an iPhone version? Alex Daley, group product manager for Microsoft Live Labs, said the Seadragon team wants to make sure the technology works well on everything from a wall-sized display to a mobile device,” Bishop reports. “‘The iPhone is the most widely distributed phone with a (graphics processing unit),’ Daley explained. ‘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. I couldn’t just pick up a Blackberry or a Nokia off the shelf and build Seadragon for it without GPU support.'”
Bishop reports, “The iPhone presents a dilemma for Microsoft more broadly, because it competes with the mobile phones that use the company’s Windows Mobile operating system.”
MacDailyNews Take: Microsoft’s Windows Mobile “competes” with Apple iPhone as Jabba the Hutt “competes” with Usain Bolt. As in, not much (especially since only one of them actually exists).
Bishop continues, “Seattle-based Seadragon Software was acquired by Microsoft in early 2006.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Cathy V.” and “iWill” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Note: Microsoft’s “Seadragon Mobile” is available via Apple’s iTunes App Store here.
No way that will get on anything I own!
MDN, you’d better be careful if you’re going to allege that Star Wars isn’t real.
There a lot of people who read this site who probably also hang out at comic book conventions and who think that Klingon is a real language.
iPhone is going to eschew up Windows Mobile and spit it out!
Oh and what MikeR said as well.
MSFT needs to get its marketing messages straight: since the iPhone was launched, it has done nothing but send out snide messages about how poor the platform is. Ditto, iPod, iTunes and – by implication – iPod touch.
Now why would I buy an app from a company that disparages my choice in portable platform?
“Now why would I buy an app from a company that disparages my choice in portable platform?”
It’s free.
So MikeR, just because it’s from MS it won’t get on anything you own? That’s kinda dumb. Now if you actually evaluated it and didn’t like it, that would be a different story.
@mccfr
But Klingon is a real language! The Bible has been translated to the Klingon language, that makes it a real Language!
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They’re just practicing for when they rip off the iPhone SDK and need to start making apps for the next generation of Windows Mobile touchscreen devices.
just downloaded it, thats amazing.
Didn’t realise the iPhone can zoom in that far into detail of the plastic penuts… they should have just called it foam nibblets….
So how is this Seadragon software supposed to be important? It is the format in which the image is stored that makes the app possible. Does this mean I have to look at a gigapixel image across a wireless connection instead of downloading it in its entirety and viewing all of its pixel awesomeness. This is a problem with Google maps, even though I’ve searched for a location, it won’t store the high res data… which doesn’t help when I’m underground in the subway.
MW = got. As in, I don’t got it.
EvilRonin:
MikeR has a valid reason. MS is an abusive monopoly in the computer software industry. For decades, their business practices were such that they stiffled competition, innovation and consumers’ choice. They show no signs of changing this business practice. Regardless of the merit of any MS application, MikeR (as well as many other people) strongly believes that when one buys products and services from such an entity, he becomes an instrument in that monopolistic abuse.
This kind of thinking (boycotting anti-consumer companies) is rather common across Europe. Not so much in the US, where consumers’ convenience and comfort overrides any issues of principle.
MCCFR, add to that list of Apple products that M$ derides: the Mac — when recently M$ had talking points about “the Apple tax” and about being able to get the full experience of M$ Office only on Windows, not the Mac (as if that was Apple’s doing).
Selling software to Mac customers at high prices and then dissing their Mac platform is the same reason why I turned away from Avid long ago. IM(not so)HO, there are better alternatives than M$ and Avid, anyway.
downloaded it, tried it. Cool for 10 secs. Whats the point of this app?
@MCCFR
Any language is ‘real’ provided it continues to be used as a means of communication. The only reason Latin is a ‘dead’ language is that it has fallen out of use.
Looks like fun. Don’t mind giving this a try.
which doesn’t help when I’m underground in the subway.
What technologically backwards country/city do you live in?
Truly advanced cities have wireless phone reception available in the underground.
I knew it!
Usain Bolt is a hologram!
@Predrag
I agree with you. I was tempted to buy it today (free as it is), just as I was tempted to get the MS Office when it was on a super sale during the Black Thursday. On each occasion, I passed their offer. I don’t appreciate some of Microsoft’s business policies. Also, maybe as someone else had once said more succinctly, “The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste.”
MDN MW: elements
It would be nice if Microsoft could release following aps on iphone:
– Excel
– Word
– Powerpoint
– Visio
It works fine (great actually).
Oh, wait, I guess that makes me the Devil…..
Ironically, I know who Jabba the Hutt is, but I don’t know who Usain Bolt is…so which one is really real?
Just further proof that Apple makes the best hardware to run any software. Even MSFT have to admit that.
“They’re just practicing for when they rip off the iPhone SDK and need to start making apps for the next generation of Windows Mobile touchscreen devices.”
Couldn’t agree more. OF course when they do they’ll claim it’s all built upon their own original ideas dating back from QDOS … and the Windows fanboys will just eat it up.
There’s no need to hate everything with a Microsoft label. I use a Microsoft mouse, and I think it is a perfectly fine mouse (more usable than an Apple Mighty Mouse). But it is fun to ridicule Microsoft, as a company, because they so often seem amusingly inept and unfocused. Microsoft today is a shadow of Microsoft ten years ago, when it was a company the competition feared.