Live from Streaming Media East Conference (New Nork City)

Microsoft's Sean Alexander introduced microsoft's breakthrough video delivery solution during the keynote address at the streaming media east conference held at the hilton towers in new york city. During the keynote microsoft demonstrated this powerful new technology, appropriately called "Silverlight". I have to say, it looks very cool! Especially the interactivity and integrated advertising platform. The video was very smooth, and the integared add-ons were well thought-out. The advertising can even hook into a live data feed, and can hover over the video (vector-based overlay).

At ignite we currently leverage technologies such as brightcove and vitalstream, but i must say the moment i get back to the hotel i will inform our technology team to start exploring microsoft's new platform right away. This might be a perfect solution for a few projects we are currently working on.

The dvd style experience and interactivity is impressive, combined with a chat application (shown as part of netflix's demo) -- wow! Finally the future has arrived. A video platform that integrates live community.

And...

It's cross-platform, cross-browser. IE, safari, firefox ... Etc... Finally a beta that's beyond junk-ware.

Of course, this dream could come crashing down the moment we actually attempt to implement this solution. Bt it can't hurt to try.

Microsoft Expression Studio, launched 2 weeks ago, apparenty works very well with silverlight. The package, comprised of 4 distinct packages (Expression web, design, blend, and media) -- and it looks slick!