Posts Tagged ‘Microsoft’

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Microsoft Releases Silverlight 2.0

Wednesday, October 15th, 2008

Earlier this week, Microsoft finally rolled out version 2.0 of Silverlight, its competitor to Adobe Flash. This version has been over a year in the making and was promised to be the “one” that made Silverlight a true contender with Flash Player.

Version 2.0 supports:

  • Powerful built-in controls: DataGrid, ListBox, Slider, ScrollViewer, Calendar controls and more.
  • Deep zoom: For ultra high resolution imagery.
  • Advanced skinning and templating support: For easy customization of applications.
  • Cross-platform and cross-browser support: Support for Mac, Windows, and Linux in Firefox, Safari, and Windows Internet Explorer.
  • And many more….

One of the most interesting points around the announcement was the install base that Microsoft quoted in its press release. The company claims that one in four consumers worldwide has access to a computer with Silverlight installed. Besides being an unusual way to present install number, this figure seems a bit high, given the relatively low developer adoption of the technology. However, with Silverlight used for both the Olympics and the Democratic National Convention this year, it may be feasible.

What does the release of Silverlight 2.0 mean? Well, it’s a very positive step toward broader penetration of rich Internet applications (RIAs) and it provides developers with a real choice in technology outside of Adobe. However, Silverlight has a long way to go to catch up with Adobe’s 99 percent install base with Flash.

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Silverlight Makes Headway

Tuesday, August 26th, 2008

Microsoft’s Silverlight technology is making waves this month with two very high profile events. First, Silverlight was the technology of choice for NBC’s streaming Olympic video coverage on NBCOlympics.com. The site racked up 70 million page views on Friday August 8th, and 4.8 million people watched 3.1 million video streams on Saturday. These are impressive numbers for Silverlight’s big debut. However, there were a number of critics that commented on the frustrating delays for online coverage, as well as the lack of full screen support and the size of the windows.

Silverlight is also the official software and HD web content provider for this week’s Democratic National Convention. Although many networks are offering streaming video from the convention, the official site is the only one showing HD video content. The HD is quite impressive, and was even dubbed as “awesome” by the Washington Post.

Even with these two high-profile events, I’m not sure it will allow Microsoft to catch up to the massive install base Adobe Flash Player already has, but it certainly brings Silverlight closer to being a true contender.

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Why AOL Acquired Yourminis

Monday, February 11th, 2008

In the very noisy announcement of Microsoft’s bid to acquire Yahoo last week, very little attention was devoted to AOL’s acquisition of Goowy, the company behind Yourminis. Granted, this acquisition was not of a comparable scale, but it was still a significant step for AOL in building stronger relations between its users and advertisers.

Yourminis is a fully customizable start page (a.k.a. personal portal) similar to iGoogle that users can personalize with any number of widgets including weather forecasts, e-mail, instant messaging, games and more. Widgets can live on a web page inside a web browser, or can stand-alone on the desktop. Unlike Google’s Desktop Gadgets and Yahoo’s Widgets, Yourminis desktop widgets use Adobe AIR and thus don’t require the installation of a large local application.

The growth in widgets, combined with the shift away from pure advertising toward the creation of marketing experiences, and the projected decline in traditional advertising dollars, has created a “perfect storm” of change in the industry.

One size no longer fits all users’ needs any more and thus some degree of personalization and engagement is required to get people’s attention. Likewise, the internet has brought greater accountability to advertising which means that measuring users’ behaviors is critical for gathering business intelligence and determining best spent advertising dollars. Widgets can help accomplish both of these goals, making this acquisition a little more important then the media coverage reflects.

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What 2008 May Bring

Thursday, December 20th, 2007

As the year comes to a close, it’s always an opportunity to reflect on what’s happened in the past 12 months and to look at what’s on the horizon.

This past year was an active one, with major shifts in a number of areas. Rich Internet Applications (RIAs), which have been on the radar since 2002, finally started to garner attention and gain traction with organizations. Major announcements from technology leaders like Adobe, Microsoft and Curl have made friendly and stable development technologies available. As well, consumers have responded positively to early applications making RIAs a viable next step, even for enterprises.

Software as a Service (SaaS), has also made significant in-roads this year and is stacking up to be a “technology to watch” for 2008. The concept of loosely coupled technologies behind the scenes, some of which are delivered as services, is a smart model that provides organizations with the economies of scale to be competitive and the flexibility to grow.

For 2008, I’m looking forward to seeing new versions of Adobe AIR and Microsoft Silverlight. Both of which seem to be promising technology to keep an eye on. It will also be interesting to see what happens with AJAX and Java in this mix too.

Finally, I’m looking forward to seeing what’s going to happen with the mobile industry. For years now it’s been ready to explode. Maybe 2008 is the year?

We’ll have to wait and see. Until then, Season’s Greetings and a Happy New Year!

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eCommerce SaaS for AIR Developers

Tuesday, October 16th, 2007

There is a definite trend toward offering Software as a Service (SaaS). In recent weeks, we’ve seen Microsoft, Adobe, and even SAP make announcements or speak publicly about how SaaS is a fundamental part of their business strategies. Another more specialized announcement in this arena was the unveiling of eCommerce Framework by AIRApps.net.

AIRApps.net is offering Adobe AIR developers an alternative way to license and sell their applications. By providing an injectable plug-in that developers can add to their applications during development, AIRApps.net is providing developers a hassle-free way to process transactions and collect licensing revenue without having to set-up their own payment processing arrangements – which can be time consuming and costly.

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Welcome to Impact

Friday, August 3rd, 2007

Welcome to Impact, our new corporate blog. Impact is designed to provide information about new technology and trends, particularly as they relate to rich user experiences. Posts will go beyond simple news items and will strive to add context to show the true “impact” these announcements can have on everyday business.

For sometime now, we’ve been working on our blogging skills and our team has been sharing its knowledge and resources internally. Now we’re happy to extend this information sharing beyond our four walls to include our blog readers.

We encourage you to help make this blog community-oriented and hope that you will add comments to our posts to help fill-in the stories when you have information to add. As well, we welcome your feedback and comments on the blog. Please feel free to email any feedback to us at Blog@INM.com.

Happy Blogging!
Vahe

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Silverlight Release Candidate Available

Friday, August 3rd, 2007

Late last week Microsoft rolled out the release candidate version of Microsoft Silverlight, the solution touted to be Microsoft’s “Flash killer”. Silverlight is a cross-browser technology for interactive Web applications that delivers media experiences based on the company’s .NET technology. This first 1.0 version of Silverlight will be heavily geared toward web video, with many of the richer developer features only coming out with version 1.1 (no release timeframe has been quoted for this second version yet).

Silverlight is an interesting technology for businesses to track, as early comments from the industry are quite favorable. So far, Adobe has a pretty solid head start with Flash 9 racking up 83.4% install base in just 9 months. To compete, Microsoft is pulling out the big guns and is offering free infrastructure support, at least initially, with up to 4 GB of free space in its data centers. And a new Silverlight Streaming service and other kinds of support are also being offered for free. It will be interesting to see how things play out on this battle.

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