14 DAY TRIAL // DeepZoomPix is nothing short of a “very tasty” cocktail of Microsoft technologies. Labeled a technology demonstration, DeepZoomPix went live today, April 16, 2009, and is designed to permit users to explore digital images stored in the Cloud in a new way, but also deliver a new model for sharing pictures online. According to Microsoft, DeepZoomPix has been created by leveraging solutions and services such as: Jellyfish Deep Zoom, Windows Azure, Silverlight, and Expression. The Redmond company underlined that in this context developers were in fact able to build their own DeepZoomPix by taking advantage of the same products.
“Using Silverlight’s exclusive Deep Zoom technology, DeepZoomPix enables you to interactively explore and share photos like never before,” revealed Karo Esmaili, Development and Platform Strategy Group at Microsoft. “Enable a seamless experience for navigating large numbers of images regardless of Internet connection quality. Make possible a “tactile” way of exploring and interacting with photographic images on the web. Empower users to dynamically zoom in on photos without having to navigate to higher resolution versions.”
Because of the technology demonstration status, DeepZoomPix will only be kept alive until December 31, 2009. In this time, end users are free to upload and share their content, while developers are invited to get an insight into the project in order to allow them to build similar functionality into their websites. All the underlying technologies that were used in creating DeepZoomPix are available today including the Jellyfish Deep Zoom framework from 2nd Factory in Japan via CodePlex, the Windows Azure Cloud operating system, Silverlight and Expression Studio
DeepZoomPix is set up to import images either from the user’s local file system or from services such as Facebook and Flickr API, or any RSS feed for that matter. Digital pictures are then prepared with Silverlight Deep Zoom and the result is stored in the Cloud, specifically in Windows Azure Storage from the Windows Azure Services Platform. Users need only Silverlight and a browser that supports Silverlight to access the content.
“DeepZoomPix is a technology showcase that enables end-users to see something familiar yet exciting. It shows designers the capabilities of Silverlight for creating rich user experiences. Finally, it shows developers how they can use various Microsoft technologies to create compelling and scalable systems,” Esmaili added.
Azure Software Development Kit (March 2009 CTP) is available for download here.
Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio March 2009 CTP is available for download here.
Silverlight 3 Beta 3 is available for download here.