Microsoft Released its First iPhone App

iPhone has its first app from Microsoft, Seadragon Mobile. Seadragon is primarily a high-tech photo display software with advanced zooming features especially for high resolution images. The app is now available for free in Apple app store.

About Seadragon: Microsoft acquired Seattle-based Seadragon Software in 2006. Now it is a part of Microsoft Live Labs. Microsoft Photosynth photo-browsing program is based on the Seadragon technology, in which images of multiple resolutions are stored and only the bits needed to present the view on any given moment are delivered.

Seadragon Mobile Menu

Microsoft released this Mobile version to check the viability of the high-tech photo display technology on mobile platforms. Why they choose iPhone? They says it's because iPhone has a Graphics processing unit and is the most popular phone featuring the same. Yeah, iPhone is not the only smartphone with a GPU but they know an iPhone app could generate more headlines. Microsoft's another rumoured iPhone app 'Tellme voice-recognition service' is not expected until next year.

Another feature that make iPhone suitable is its 'multi-touch input'. The Seadragon app comes with about 50 sample images of 10 gigapixel range. The iPhone multi-touch screen would be handy for zooming in and out the high resolution images. Along with zooming around users can also make up limited Photosynth collections and can view uploaded 'deep zoom' images. Read more about Seadragon Mobile.