Question. What software product was shipped over two years ago and it is now has been introduce to cover sporting events including Major League Soccer, the Winter Olympics, Sunday Night Football. March Madness event will also be carried. It’s even being used for sundry events like the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show and the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
Answer: Microsoft Silverlight.
This is just another innovation that Windows7 is tacking on as its own and making the most of it. In fact Silverlight goes beyond Windows7, it is a cross platform product.
Not to be confined to the Windows world, Microsoft is looking ahead as it pushes it video technology beyond current operating systems. For starters, Microsoft is currently at work preparing the final development build of Silverlight 4. Earlier builds have been made available in the Windows environment as well as Mac OS X users. The final release expected by April 2010. Even Linux users have been included. They have Moonlight 2 which is available for download, and Moonlight 3 as a preview has already also been offered.
What makes Silverlight so useful?
Merely two years ago web developers were not impressed with Silverlight. The considered it a knockoff of Adobe Flash. But things have changed. Silverlight’s features such as Deep Zoom, Smooth Streaming, support for HD content, etc., represents new opportunities in the area of web development. So programming shops have new, more powerful technologies to build with. The new mentality at work for programmers will be use it or be left out of using new features and capabilities. Silverlight 4 and the introduction of new technologies such as the Silverlight Analytics Framework means that developers can not continue to ignore Silverlight.
Showcasing Silverlight
At this site you can browse live Silverlight projects from around the world. Currently there are over 850 apps developed using Silverlight that have been uploaded to the Microsoft Showcasing Site.
At MIX10, the Silverlight 4 Release Candidate (RC) was released. Here are some instructional videos and labs that you can use to learn about the product:
Market Share
Last November at the professional developes conference Microsoft announced that Silverlight was installed on 45 percent of all Internet-connected devices in the world. But now that number is now approaching 60 percent and accelerating rapidly. It looks like Flash, the application that Microsoft was interested in competing against, is losing its dominance.
Silverlight Market Penetration
Rah – Rah – Raw
Although it is easy to jump on the Silverlight bandwagon, there have been glitches in the software that have forced some websites to drop the product. Last year MLB.com, that is Major League Baseball.com decided to drop its association with Microsoft Silverlight. The was due to the fact that users couldn’t download the product if they didn’t have administrative rights. This apparently frustrated many users who were trying to download the product at work but couldn’t do so. (Were talking about reporters and other news organizations that would be reporting on Baseball.)
Whether this influences other sporting organizations remains to be seen. But this decision was not without financial fallout. MLB runs a very profitable web site and problems with Silverlight are bound to make other sports organizations nervous.
But in an unrelated area, Netflix users suspected Silverlight have been responsible for a series of glitches that occurred with the streaming-video service. Microsoft didn’t back away from the critizism and acknowledged that its player was instrumental in at least some problems when it reported that Silverlight 3, unlike Silverlight 2, could assist Netflix customers who run lower-end computers, and who were experiencing dropped frames and poor viewing quality.
Most of these problems will probably be solved with the latest iteration, Silverlight 4. Microsoft is certainly banking on it.
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