Apple offers Microsoft's first iPhone app

by Stevie Smith - Dec 15 2008, 13:06

While they’re longstanding market rivals in the technology industry, that hasn’t stopped America’s leading software giant Microsoft Corp. from tapping into the popularity of the iPhone by offering up a mobile phone application on Apple’s online App Store.

Microsoft Live Labs offers its first iPhone application. Image: Microsoft.

Crafted by Microsoft’s Live Labs team, the App Store arrival of ‘Seadragon Mobile’ gives iPhone users access to a free demonstration program designed to test the viability of the high-tech Seadragon photo-display technology on mobile platforms, reports Todd Bishop at TechFlash.Most commonly known for providing the mainstay technology for Microsoft’s ‘Photosynth’ photo-browsing program, Seadragon stores imagery in multiple resolutions and only screens what the user requires for viewing at any particular time.The App Store demo has been released so that Live Labs can assess how effectively the technology functions on a popular mobile device equipped with compatible accelerated graphics processing capabilities.Seadragon Mobile’s test bed will see App Store users presented with around 50 sample images (reaching upwards of 10 gigapixels), which will include satellite snaps along with various photographs captured from views of outer space. Some of the features open to those who download the free app include the ability to use finger gestures on the iPhone’s touch screen to zoom around its sample content, while those who create and upload “Deep Zoom” images will be able to use the demo version of Seadragon in order to view them. According to Alex Daley, group product manager at Live Labs, the team’s goal via the App Store is to gauge whether Seadragon “is really viable on the mobile platform in a way that we haven’t been able to test before.” Daley also added that Live Labs is thrilled that it can seek application validation by giving away the demonstration program to so many people for free.

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