InternetOlympics set the stage for emerging Web tech fight (Reuters)
Reuters - As the world's best athletes compete in Beijing, the summer Olympic games are setting the stage for a battle between Microsoft Corp and Adobe Systems Inc over the Internet's next big competition.
SEATTLE (Reuters) - As the world's best athletes compete in Beijing, the summer Olympic games are setting the stage for a battle between Microsoft Corp and Adobe Systems Inc over the Internet's next big competition. Microsoft's Silverlight technology and rival Adobe's Flash format are currently locked in a race over who delivers the world's online video, but the ultimate prize may be who powers the next generation of Web software. Using Silverlight, the NBC site offers a glimpse of what is possible with future Web applications because viewers are able to watch up to four videos at once or follow the action with an online commentary that runs alongside the video. More than 40 million U.S. viewers have gone to NBC's Olympics site to watch some of the 2,200 hours of live footage from the Beijing games. All those viewers need is a Silverlight player on their browser if they do not have one already. By building up Silverlight's user base, the world's largest software maker is looking to win over developers who see Web platforms such as Silverlight and Flash as a new way to deliver powerful Web-linked programs incorporating rich graphics. Currently, those platforms are mainly reserved for multimedia applications such as Google Inc's popular YouTube site, which runs on Adobe's Flash technology. "It's quickly becoming a very popular way... [ Read more on www.yahoo.com ]
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