Microsoft Release First iPhone App: Seadragon

An unlikely company has released the latest iPhone app: Microsoft. Microsfot Live Labs, a division within the company focused on innovative and revolutionary web applications, has come out with an iPhone version of their Seadragon software. Seadragon is a project which, according to the Live Labs site:

The aim of Seadragon is nothing less than to change the way we use screens, from wall-sized displays all the way down to cell phones, so that graphics and photos are smoothly browsed, regardless of the amount of data or the bandwidth of the network.

Seadragon appears to be useful in situations where the information being observed is interesting at both the macro- and micro-levels, such as maps or large collections of documents. Microsoft has posted a video demoing the Seadragon app on their Live Labs blog.

There had been speculation that Microsoft’s TellMe voice-recognition application would be their first foray into the iPhone application world, but that application is not due until early in 2009.

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