SeaDragon

I first saw this concept almost two years ago in Blaise’s Ted.com presentation . I knew this whole paradigm was going to totally transform how information is presented and consumed.

The part of the demo when he shows the mock issue of the Guardian I think does the best job of showing how this will change the general way we think of organizing information. One of the most important elements of effective communication is quickly establishing context. Context is terms of the mental models and structures through which we understand and make sense of new information. The problem lies in that when the sender fails to establish the appropriate context, we the receivers do it ourselves. And we all think we are much better at doing this on our own than we really are. (Mostly because we aren't really aware that we are always doing it.)

The current model of using hyperlinked text can be really effective. However, any visual mental model of related information and concepts is usually very week. For example, tt is easy to forget how you ended up where you are, and still understand the related information as part of the greater structure from which you linked out of...

Well almost two years later, and wrapped of course in Microsofts silverlight.. Seadragon is finally available in Microsoft Live Labs

Microsoft gets credit for releasing things like this in their Labs section... I think it will help with thier branding issues. (everyone hates Vista) With the complexity of new software and the speed at which we demand it, bugs or inevitiable. So with a few bugs aside, and lacking any core marketing message, SeaDragon is here.

The iPhone app is pretty cool. Photosynth is equally impressive from a technical perspective, but less practical.

Be sure to check out the infinite zooming concept applied by Prezi.com for making really cool looking presentions. I will post more about it my next post.