User:Khanes/MS Seadragon

Seadragon is a team within the Microsoft Live Labs. Their technology, of the same name, can be found in a number of different Microsoft products and offerings. They specialize in the viewing of single, large images or in collections of images.

History
Founded in 2003, the company that would eventually become Seadragon Software was originally named Sand Codex. Based in Princeton, Sand Codex moved to Seattle in 2004 to accommodate founder Blaise Agüera y Arcas's wife's new role at the University of Washington.

In 2005 Sand Codex received $2 million in funding from the Madrona Venture Group. It is after this injection of capital that the company changes its name to Seadragon Software.

In early 2006, Seadragon Software is acquired by Microsoft and is organized within the newly formed Live Labs, a joint undertaking between MSN and MSR, under Dr. Gary William Flake.

Silverlight 2 is released in 2007 with the Deep Zoom feature. This marks the first publicly shipping Seadragon software. Seadragon will continue to contribute to future releases of Silverlight.

Photosynth is launched to the public in the summer of 2008 and the Photosynth team officially breaks from Seadragon to join MSN. .

Implementations
Seadragon Ajax is a pure JavaScript implementation of the Seadragon technology. It is available as a standalone library and in an ACT for the .NET framework.

The Deep Zoom feature of Microsoft's Silverlight technology is an adaptation of Seadragon technology.

Seadragon Mobile is an iPhone app created from Seadragon technology.

File Format
All current implementations of Seadragon technology make use of the Deep Zoom Images, consisting of either a single Deep Zoom Image or a Deep Zoom Collection.

Examples
Photosynth uses Seadragon for its D3D viewer and Silverlight for its default viewer.

Pivot uses a combination of Seadragon and WPF to render images and collections.

The Seadragon Showcase page lists a number of other examples live on the web

iBing (iTunes link) is the Bing search app for the iPhone. The mapping experience is built on top of the Seadragon Mobile.