I’ve been trying out the Windows Deep Zoom Composer desktop application to create a Seadragon Ajax version of a Deep Zoom image that does not require Silverlight.

Seadragon is a Microsoft technology that facilitates a “deep zoom” capability for vector and bitmap images, Seadragon Ajax allows the embedding of this technology to any website without the precondition of a Silverlight plugin.

What is quite attractive about this technology is that the detail (required when “zooming”) is presented on demand over a broadband connection in a seamless fashion which provides the illusion of almost instantaneous loading of a high resolution image, even for gigapixel images (although I have yet to see any of the largest digital photos presented in this way).

Seadragon was presented at TED2007 by Blaise Aguera y Arcas who also introduced Photosynth:

Using Deep Zoom Composer I simply arranged some photographs that I had taken (in addition to one from Panoramio) to create a montage of 3 images:

This was then exported and an embedded version of the output from Deep Zoom Composer is shown below which can be “zoomed and panned” (Note: a Seadragon Ajax Library is available).

I find this technology quite exciting in terms of providing detailed information in a very accessible format and this and the Canvas for OneNote and pptPlex “Concept Tests” tools are providing ready access.

An iPhone application for Seadragon (Microsoft's first iPhone app) is also available with ports to other mobile platforms potentially on their way. Craig Dunn’s and Tim Heuer’s blogs both provide a good overview of this application.