Last Friday, Microsoft sent out a press release announcing that “…the Presidential Inaugural Committee (PIC) has selected the company’s Silverlight technology to enable live and on-demand video streaming of the official inauguration swearing-in ceremony on the PIC Web site…“.
I’m not entirely sure if it’s worth bragging about one site using Silverlight. Even if it is the “official” site… Especially since all the big networks are using Flash technology to stream the event. It’s also funny to note that “… the list of donors to the inaugural committee does not include any contributors who list Silverlight-rival Adobe Systems as an employer. As we have reported here before, it does include several high-profile Microsoft executives, including CEO Steve Ballmer…“, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. A Microsoft spokeswoman was quick to note that “… these donations are personal contributions from the named Microsoft executives, and not representative of Microsoft the corporation …“. I’m sure a $200.000+ contribution wouldn’t have hurt though. ;-)
When I read the press release, I remembered that video interview that Robert Scoble did with Eric Schmidt a while ago. Eric is the director of media and advertising evangelism at Microsoft. In that interview, Eric Schmidt confirms (although not in those exact words) that it was Microsoft who built the NBC Olympics site and that NBC only delivered the content for it. He says that his evangelism group was responsible for project management. The developer side of things was done by Scott Guthrie’s group. A team at MSNBC was responsible for the content and his group worked with external developers. Now, I am not completely unbiased of course, but to me that sounds as if Microsoft paid for the whole site.
I’m not suggesting anything here but it makes you wonder how technology is chosen these days.
Anyway… There will be plenty of live sources to watch tomorrow’s inauguration. I kinda wish I was in Washington to witness it live but instead I’ll be watching it online on Current.tv, MSNBC.com, FOXnews.com, CNN.com, UStream.tv or any of the other big networks who are all streaming live video with Flash on a day-to-day basis. Go Flash!
It seems to me that it would be perfectly normal to “make deals” to promote a product that is relatively new compared to Flash. Of course, since you’re an Adobe platform evangelist, that might not seem so obvious. The fact of the matter is that neither Flash nor Silverlight are going away any time soon.
This is totally silly. Adobe does plenty of payola deals–they just don’t have the same kind of cash. Plus, you think just possibly Silverlight actually works? For the DNC it was smooth! Plus I believe this particular implementation is using Move.
Sounds like sour grapes
Why use technology that requires everyone to upgrade just to use it for a very big event.. and then not everyone will be able to even use the tech.. on top of that the whole C# + Visual Studio combo for working with Silverlight makes my stomach turn.
@Ron, same thing could be said for Flash a while ago.. and even for Flash NOW… cnn requires the octoshape install.
Personally, I’d love to use Visual Studio for AS programming
sorry but out of all the streams I saw live the Silverlight one looked and performed the best. Whether or not that’s down to how the content was being served, load on servers or the shere amount of servers MS put behind it I don’t know. At the end of the day, Silverlight video gets a +1 from me after this experience.
Guys, if you are not scared about Silverlight why are you actually talking about it all the time? The same is with Ted Patrick presenting some stupid numbers. If you are way ahead of Microsoft then what is the point?
@jake – exactly the same sentiment I’ve been hearing from many developers I talk too – Adobe are constantly making noise to attract attention to them. All we seem to here from the Flash/Flex evangelists now is a ‘pissing’ match aimed towards Microsoft! Guys, your time would be better spent looking after your corner – concentrate on that!
I must say I’m a bit disappointed in the decision that was made by the Obama team. Of all the people in Washington my hopes were pinned on for not being bought out, well he was the one.
And I’m not sure how everyone else recommends technologies to their clients, but if said technology doesn’t have at least an 80% (and preferably 85+) penetration rate then I wouldn’t be inclined to take them down that particular technology path. So either Microsoft better start “enticing” every single Flash developer on the planet to use Silverlight, or Barack’s going to have to do a few more inauguration speeches ;-)
It will be interesting to see what, if any, the increased uptake of Silverlight has on the Flash install rate. My money’s (no pun intended ;-) on it being close to nada.