Posted by Brian Steel

Last night, I experienced my first introduction to Silverlight. I finally had the opportunity to catch up on some of the Olympic games that I had missed. So, I figured what the heck, why not check out the games online? After a simple Google search, I found NBCOlympics.com. I clicked through the site in order to watch some Olympic events only to discover that I must download the Silverlight plug-in software before proceeding. Silverlight is Microsoft’s cross-browser, cross-platform and cross-device plug-in software solution for embedded streaming media player technologies, which happens to be .NET compatible. Although I anticipated my experience to be much worse, I was pleasantly surprised. One click and a minute later the .DMG file was on my desktop. I do not know why Microsoft software runs so much smoother on Macintosh?

Anyway, upon completion of the software install, I was back on NBCOlympics.com watching Olympic programming such as Women’s Archery, Softball and Kayaking. You know all the extremely important ‘mainstream’ Olympic events. It was great! The Silverlight player was easy to use and the streams were like watching the real event on a really small screen with the option to enlarge. However I do not recommend the enlarge feature it is not so great, the playback becomes ‘blocky,’ ‘distorted’ and difficult to watch.

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My students know that I have a weakness for Nokia technology. And of all of hometown favorite Microsoft’s innovations, I like its Silverlight application the most.

So I’m thrilled to see the two come together today, with this announcement that Nokia handsets will now carry the multimedia platform (which competes directly with Flash).

While I’m stacking links, here’s that Wikipedia link to the concept of “Participatory Video” that I mentioned in class last week. It seems to really fit with what we’re doing in this class of ours:

…a set of techniques to involve a group or community in shaping and creating their own film. The idea behind this is that making a video is easy and accessible, and is a great way of bringing people together to explore issues, voice concerns or simply to be creative and tell stories.

Finally, here’s the link to the blog coverage of that Magazine Publishers Association Digital Media Conference we discussed in class (“video, video everywhere!”), along with more information about my former MSNBC colleague, Gary Seidman, who is now making a living from producing online slideshows.

Posted by hanson hosein.