[open-visualisation] Microsoft and Zoom

Sat Jun 14 10:23:24 UTC 2008

I don't know how everyone on this list feels about Microsoft (though I could
venture a guess...), but with their acquisition of the SeaDragon technology
a year or two ago, they've finally been making some progress towards solving
the "zoom" problem.

In the latest version of Silverlight (Microsoft's attempt to defenestrate
Flash from your browser window), they've included the ability to create your
own "deep zoom" applications, which I'm guessing use the same basic
technology behind the amazing PhotoSynth demo.

Ok, sorry for the long-winded commentary there. Let's cut to the links, some
of which may require installing Silverlight (which works well on Firefox):

PhotoSynth:
  http://labs.live.com/photosynth/
Hard Rock Live's demo using Deep Zoom:
  http://memorabilia.hardrock.com/
Some guy's demo using his personal photos:
  http://www.windowsvistablog.com/deepzoom/spaceneedle/index.html
Deep Zoom Composer:

http://blogs.msdn.com/expression/archive/2008/03/05/download-the-preview-of-the-deep-zoom-composer.aspx

Any thoughts? It seems like many of the problems associated with visualizing
"large" datasets could be at least partially solved by something like this,
which smoothly handles much of the headache involved with creating and
interacting with an infinite plane of hi-res images.

greg
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