I was somewhat surprised that Microsoft has decided to launch for free (for the first time) Seadragon Mobile, a very interesting zooming-user-interface, on Apple’s iPhone. Check it out:
I was first captivated by Seadragon some years ago when it was shown in a demo – the way it can (infinitely) zoom down smoothly and still be sharp (without first opening a gigazillion-byte file), the way it has almost zero UI element on screen for it to work (so nothing is blocking you from the things you actually do want to see) – is something inherently suitable for mobile application, IMHO.
Wonder if this’d take off to one day become a dominant way of accessing information. While currently it’s very much just browsing through static images, some day it may be interactive elements: links, bookmarks, videos, opened and running applications, etc.
