Silverlight

Earlier on Monday, Microsoft announced that it is ready with a final version of its Silverlight 2 media player, which is a rival to Adobe Systems' Flash. But despite the original hoopla, Silverlight has enjoyed uneven success. Now the company is promising a big push, which will result in hundreds of millions of PCs running Silverlight 2. CNET News' Ina Fried has the story.

Today's stories:

Updated 9:20 a.m. PDT, with comments from conference call and at 10:20 with additional comments regarding Silverlight and the iPhone.

Microsoft on Monday announced, as expected, that it is ready with a final version of its Silverlight 2 media player.

Silverlight 2 will be available for download starting Tuesday, Microsoft said. Among the new features are support for digital rights management technology, improved cross-platform support and deep zoom technology. Microsoft also announced a range of new partners including AOL, Blockbuster, CBS College Sports, Toyota, and Yahoo Japan.

Microsoft also disclosed some numbers for the Olympics work it did with NBC. … Read more

Microsoft has scheduled a conference call on Monday to announce, among other things, that it has completed version 2.0 of Silverlight, its rival to Adobe's Flash.

The software maker has scheduled a conference call for 9 a.m. PDT with developer division executive Scott Guthrie.

A Microsoft representative declined to comment on the impending announcement, but a source told CNET News that the completion of Silverlight 2.0 is among the topics of discussion. Microsoft released Beta 2 of the software in June, while a "release candidate" version was offered up last month.

The software maker … Read more

Criminals may have found a way to get you to click on malware without you even knowing. Worse, they might also be able to open the microphone or Webcam on your PC to eavesdrop.

Called Clickjacking, the process allows the attacker to trick you the user into clicking on something only briefly visible on the screen. While it's mostly a problem for the browser makers, it also affects Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, and Sun's Java.

Although clickjacking, which may contain up to half dozen specific vulnerabilities, has been around for years, it has recently come to the attention … Read more

As new market-share data from Net Applications shows, Google's Chrome got off to a roaring start, and has been coming down to earth lately. In its first few days after release, Google Chrome went as high as 1.16 percent market share, but it started dropping after the euphoria of the announcement died down.

Google Chrome has now settled into a holding pattern around 0.7 percent browser market share.

Cause for alarm? Of course not. Google never intended Chrome to be a one-day-wonder, and I doubt the company is worried about Chrome's market share today. The battle … Read more

Adobe Systems' Flash technology may not have qualified for the Olympics, but it is in tip-top shape for the National Football League season just getting under way.

With the bulk of NFL teams hitting the gridiron in earnest Sunday, it'll be Flash that delivers the live video streaming on the Web of NBC's Sunday Night Football games. This marks the first time that full-length NFL games are widely available online in the U.S., according to Adobe and the NFL.

The NFL-Adobe partnership wouldn't normally be quite so notable--after all, Flash is one of the most well-established … Read more

SYDNEY--The biggest rival for Microsoft's next-generation Silverlight Web technology will be JavaScript, not Adobe Systems' ubiquitous Flash, according to experts speaking at Microsoft's Tech.Ed conference here.

"I think that the next 18 months we're going to see a 100- to 1,000-fold speed increase in JavaScript as Google and the guys at Mozilla are going to kick us all in the arse and make our JavaScript jittered," Microsoft senior program manager Scott Hanselman told the audience Friday, days after Google released its Chrome browser, which features faster JavaScript technology.

Jonas Follesø, senior consultant … Read more

If a robot has a firm handshake, does that mean its creator is a stand-up guy, or just that he programmed his robot to have a firm handshake? That and other serious technology topics are examined today, and we also give our official Buzz Out Loud reviews of the new Microsoft commercial with Jerry Seinfeld. Brian Cooley joins us for Friday goodness.

Listen now: Download today's podcast

LHC will not destroy the universe in 5 days http://www.boingboing.net/2008/09/04/lhc-will-not-destroy.html

Microsoft begins big ad push http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10033375-56.html http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/9/seinfeld-s-first-microsoft-commercial-awkward-not-funny… Read more

Here's the way things work at Microsoft: After correcting shortcomings in the first and second editions of its software, version 3.0 of a Microsoft product usually silences the company's worst critics, allowing management to get on with business of crushing rivals. But I'll be first to acknowledge that Silverlight breaks with that pattern.

Since the start of the Beijing Olympics, I've been using the Silverlight 2 beta to access video over the Internet and it works just fine. As a loyal Flash user, I was surprised when Microsoft won the deal to supply NBC with … Read more