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Inauguration streamed using Silverlight

PIC2009While surfing the web, I found this blog post by Chuck Freedman that points an article talking about the announcement that the Presidential Inaugural Committee (PIC) will be (proudly) using Silverlight to stream the inauguration.  Here’s the press release from Microsoft.  It’s a little funny because, with a little searching, you’ll find a bunch of blog posts that wonder what they were thinking.  I don’t doubt that the donations from Microsoft execs had something to do with it, as Serge Jespers elludes.

From a strategy standpoint, if Microsoft did pay to have the PIC site stream with Silverlight, it would be some of the best money they could have spent.  Not that the only place to watch the inauguration is on the PIC site (far from it) but it’s a prime chance to get silverlight installed on more browsers and push the penetration a little deeper.

I love this little RIA that shows the installation of Silverlight and Flash on browsers that visit the site.  It’s not a completely objective illustration since the application is built in Flash, but it definitely paints a picture.

Microsoft employees swear by Silverlight, as they should, but from where I’m sitting, everyone else is using Flash.  It’s a good time to be a Flash/Flex developer.

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