Microsoft Mix: Thoughts and impressions for the creative, design, & marketing community
Microsoft has made some pretty significant announcement here in Las Vegas today that will impact the way you communicate on-line, develop Web and interactive content - and event how you think about what is on-line and what is a desktop application... Silverlight 3 was announced here and has some technical features that are useful for developers -things like GPU acceleration and support for additional CODECs such as H.264, MPG 4, and AAC but the real mind-blowing things revolutionize the user experience:
- Live streaming with full DVR-like controls - pause / slow motion / rewind for live streams. This puts Silverlight live streaming miles ahead of anything else. NBC announced they are renewing their use of Silverlight for all streaming of the next Olympics (Vancouver) using Silverlight.
- HD streaming - you'll see this at the next Olympics as they'll be streaming all content in HD.
- Out-of-browser experiences on Mac and Windows - not just a browser plug-in
- Off-line support: Silverlight 3.0 applications can run as stand-alone applications. So they can consume services while connected, and then switch to an "off-line" mode when not connected.
- Support for multi-touch - like the "pinch" - think Minority Report or iPhone
I'll have more updates throughout the event... as I'm at a Microsoft-focused event, most of my posts will focus on their technology this week...