Shrewsbury firm zoom in on worldwide conservation.

London, UK, (February 18th 2010)

Award-winning firm of software developers has launched an innovative web-based application that has been attracting worldwide interest.

Shrewsbury firm Shoothill has created a ‘Deep Zoom’ image of the endangered Sumatran tiger for habitat conservation society Fauna and Flora International, to mark the International Year of Biodiversity and the Chinese Year of the Tiger. The Deep Zoom application allows internet users to zoom into one giant image and view a complex web of thousands of other images expertly linked together.

“We were really keen to work with FFI because they’re doing really worthwhile work in conserving endangered species and fragile ecosystems around the world,” said Rod Plummer, Managing Director of Shoothill. “We also wanted to showcase this amazing new Microsoft technology and show the world what we’re capable of doing.”

Shoothill have become the world leaders in creating large Deep Zoom imagery. Their projects have included a tribute to Michael Jackson for MSN and a Deep Zoom of Charles Darwin to mark the Bi-Centenary of his birth in Shrewsbury.

“Deep Zoom is fantastic as it allows enormous amounts of data to be viewed over the internet,” explained Rod. “The image of the Sumatran tiger is absolutely vast - 18 gigabytes in size - and within it there are 180,000 cell photos. If you printed the whole thing out, you could cover the entire playing surface of Wembley.

“But the great thing about this software is that when you zoom in on different parts of the picture, it only delivers the data from that section, rather than the whole thing, so it’s quick and simple to use.”

The Tiger Deep Zoom was launched last week in Brazil and this week it arrived on MSN UK and a host of other websites.

You can view the application at http://www.fauna-flora.org/tiger_mosaic.php.

Notes to Editors:
Shoothill are a specialist software developers and experts in visualising and articulating complex data using Microsoft platforms like Virtual Earth, Silverlight and Deep Zoom. Their projects serve a variety of sectors from news and media to transportation, health and emergency services.

For further information please visit us at www.shoothill.com.

Press Contact: Rod Plummer
+44 (0) 845 4210390
rod.plummer@shoothill.com

For more information about the work of Fauna and Flora International, visit www.fauna-flora.org.