Microsoft Silverlight

It is a platform designed for creating dynamic online content and working interactively with it. It combines text, vector and bitmap graphics, animations and video. Using a small downloadable component (plug-in), it allows interactive control of games or applications and playback of multimedia in most current web browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari) on Windows and Mac OS X platforms.

In the Czech Republic, one of the largest projects based on Silverlight technology is the joint project of BPA sport marketing and Telefónica O2 - TV.HOKEJ.CZ. It offers the general public free live internet streaming of O2 Extraliga matches. An example of use from abroad is the webcast of the Beijing Olympics on NBCOlympics.com with more than 50 million unique visitors, 1.3 billion views, 70 million video streams and 600 million minutes of video watched.

A major advantage of Silverlight is its support for HD VC-1 video-streaming, playback of video in the quality used on HD-DVD or Blue-ray, and support for full-screen mode. Software using the Silverlight platform can be written using design tools - Microsoft Expression Studio or development - Microsoft Visual Studio, or use any other environment supporting AJAX, Phython, Ruby and all .NET languages.

At http://silverlight.net you can also find a lot of other information about Silverlight, such as:

• Blogs
• More than 200 demos from 41 countries
• Guidance for aspiring creators
• Documentation and technical specifications.