As most of you know I am an huge proponent of Microsoft Silverlight and not just because I lead a team that does some serious bleeding edge work with it, but simply because I think the platform itself has huge potential.  My impression is that the general public and even those with relatively extensive technical knowledge still see Silverlight as just a competitor to Flash, or possibly “that new Microsoft software” that you can use to make video players with. 

To really get an idea of what abilities Silverlight has, admittedly you have to spend a lot of time with it.  A lot of time.  I am fortunate to have the resources and an extremely creative and knowledgeable staff who’ve pushed the limits of Silverlight pretty much as far as it will go.  Our long range goal is maybe best termed as RIA mashup - agnostic service digesters consuming APIs using component libraries to deliver not only rich internet applications but interactive and engaging as well.

I’m talking about being to openly swap back and forth between micro-blogging platforms (think Jaiku and Twitter and Tumblr), integrated messaging (Live, Yahoo, etc), alerts, mapping systems, and a variety of other needs all dumped into a flexible, web-based interface.  And then add on top of it that companies needing those systems can mix and match them in an easy to use (Silverlight driven) interface to create their own.  Without any coding.

NBC launched what I think (outside of the Silverlight.net site itself) is the best large-scale distribution of a Silverlight application example with its Olympics video site and be sure to try out the enhanced player. 

Sidenote - interesting blog post on mashable never even mentions the Silverlight platform though Silverlight can be distinctly used for mashups. In any case, I recommend reading the impact of the business of delivering Olympics coverage - with the event coming from China, there is an huge and distinct opportunity to use the Internet as an huge distribution mechanism and I think NBC is about to make some serious history with this. Though none of the features the NBC player demonstrates is new by any stretch of the imagination, remember the context.  Flash has been around since 1996, Silverlight since 2007.  Flash is a truly mature product, it has well over 96% penetration rate, runs on all platforms, blah blah blah.  And to be sure, I actually have nothing against Flash.  It does what it’s supposed to do and it does it well. 

But again, it’s had 12 years of practice.  Silverlight as a managed code platform has had less than 12 months.  And from working with it, it does have distinct advantages, most particularly where live video is concerned and one that will become increasingly evident as the Olympics progress, thanks in part to the NBC player.  In fact, I firmly believe (and pretty much know) that you will begin to see a proliferation of businesses begin using Silverlight, not to replace Flash but along side of it (a player we recently developed for example, has both SIlverlight and Flash components).

If you haven’t, I highly recommend taking a close look at it and it’s progression in the coming months.  Don’t discount it just because it has a Microsoft label and because it’s the new kid on the block.  There are some amazing changes headed our way.