With aggressive developments on how Web users are able to view and parse information, UI and interactive tech are more important than ever. Microsoft's Bing and others have attempted to set themselves apart through these means, with a beta of its visual search released this week. 

Sony Computer Entertainment unveiled it's own effort at CEDEC 2009, a Japanese video game conference. The high-resolution zoom technology is able to seamlessly explore a high-resolution image or series of images. It's implications for interactive advertising can be seen around the 2:20 mark, with the user zooming in on a man's face to see a mosquito, revealing a hidden message. With the fickle nature of Web browers' digestion of online advertising, zoom technology may be one way to capture the often hard to capture.

This isn't the first time zoom technology has been explored. A 2007 TED conference revealed Microsoft's Photosynth and Deep Zoom, software made possible through their acquistion of Sea Dragon Software's Sea Dragon, a technology very much akin to Sony's.

Sea Dragon may make an easy Web transition now that it is a component of Silverlight, Microsoft's proprietary Web plug-in and direct Flash competitor. Mobile devices are also getting their cut of the deal, with Seadragon Mobile now on the Apple AppStore and, in time, Windows Mobile, Microsoft's smartphone OS. This opens the door for a new kind of mobile advertising and is no doubt a tantalizing thought for advertisers when smart phones get around to becoming the norm.

Check out the Hard Rock memorabilia site for an example of Sea Dragon in action.