Obama's Inauguration to be streamed via Silverlight.
Jan17Written by:
2009/01/17 09:00 AM 
Microsoft announced on Friday that its Silverlight technology has been chosen to stream U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's swearing-in ceremony live on the Presidential Inaugural Committee's Web site.
Microsoft announced on Friday that its Silverlight technology has been chosen to stream U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's swearing-in ceremony live on the Presidential Inaugural Committee's Web site.
Obama has joined up with Silverlight before. Last August Obama's acceptance speech for his party's nomination as a US president candidate was streamed via Silverlight from the Democratic National Convention. Silverlight has had another high profile streaming event before. Last year the coverage of the Olympics was streamed for for US broadcasting giant NBC.
On November 4, Obama was elected as the first African-American U.S. president, making Tuesday's inauguration a very special historical event.
Silverlight was first released in April 2007 and was to be rival to Adobe Flash. The Silverlight technology is a set of tools for developing and designing Internet applications which also houses a media player for delivering content. It was only until the release of Silverlight 2 back in October that Silverlight became a viable alternative to Flash for building rich Internet applications (RIAs). While Silverlight 1.0 was just a glorified media player, it wasn't until Silverlight 2.0 that the technology really took off.
There have been many pro's and con's written about both Silverlight and Adobe. Silverlight is the new power on the global stage and it will be a serious contender in the RIA market. One thing is for sure, at least there are choices now. For me I prefer Silverlight. It integrates beautifully into my Visual Studio Applications. Seems to be a lot more Search Engine friendly and of course its a new toy. There is no time like the present to build Rich Internet Applications. Gone are the days of static one dimensional, boring, horrible websites. Then it was web 1.0, then came web 2.0. Now were at the dawn of, if not over the event horizon of Web3.0.
What do you think? Do you think that Silverlight is the "Flash Killer"? Do you think Silverlight will last and stand up to the challenge? Are you using Silverlight or flash?
Drop us a note and let us know what your thoughts are.
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