The rumors are true: Netflix is beta-testing a new a streaming movie player based on Microsoft Silverlight. As you may have read on Download Squad earlier this week, the new Silverlight-based player is compatible with Microsoft's DRM scheme, which means that, yes, you can finally watch Netflix instantly on your Mac. For Windows users, the player may be an upgrade, but for Mac users, it's a whole new feature.

To try the new player, you'll have to opt in. The first time you try to watch a movie, you'll be prompted to install Silverlight if you don't already have it. From there, you're good to go. Netflix warns that once you opt in, you can only use the Silverlight player, even on other machines. They also mention that the selection of movies for the new player is limited, but I didn't have trouble finding or playing any of the movies I tested.

A brief recap for those just emerging from their caves: Firefox 3 announced the goal of setting the one-day record for downloads of a single piece of software, and on June 17, the browser scored over 8 million downloads. Here's something even the tech-savvy may have missed, though: that OTHER browser, the one with the huge market share, has been running its own download campaign. It's called Carbongrove, and it's an Internet Explorer 7-compatible, Silverlight-based site that pushes reduced carbon usage and up-to-date web standards.

If you want to take the plunge and download IE7 or IE8 beta, you can then head to Carbongrove.com, take a quick quiz, and plant your own virtual tree. It might not be the cool, trendy thing to do (that would be downloading Firefox), but at least Microsoft is making an attempt to spread a little awareness about a cause that matters. This campaign launched two months ago, though, and we're just hearing about it now. Might be that world records and new releases trump carbon footprints and Acid Test results in the cutthroat world of browser downloads.

Google has released a version of Google Gears that runs on Windows Mobile 5.0/6 devices. What does that mean? It means that you can access web applications like Zoho Writer or Buxfer on your mobile, even when you're offline. You'll need to go online at some point to synchronize your data, but once that's done you can open and view your documents while you're on the subway or on the ocean floor (the two places we're pretty sure there's on internet access available).

This is pretty big news for Windows Mobile uses who are tired of dealing with Office Mobile. Zoho's online office suite offers most of the features you'd want from a word processor. And it's free. Right now you can't edit Zoho Writer documents in offline mode, but Zoho plans to add that functionality soon.

In somewhat related news, Microsoft and Nokia have signed a deal to use Silverlight in some of its phone and internet tablets. Right now, Silverlight is primarily a platform for displaying rich media content on the web (like Adobe Flash), Microsoft eventually plans to add offline functionality to Silverlight (like Adobe AIR or Google Gears). That means we could see offline support for online applications coming to Nokia devices one day as well.

Things are changing over at Microsoft Download Center, as the new beta introduces Microsoft's take on Flash, Silverlight. That means if you want to check out the beta for yourself, you'll have to download the Silverlight plug-in in order to actually see the site - which from a usability perspective is never much fun.

Then again, people didn't really mind downloading Flash. Nitpicks aside, the website, if you can still call it that ("rich interactive application" anyone?), does look a lot prettier from a cosmetic standpoint than its current counterpart. It is also a lot tidier - the width of the experience has been reduced as well as the feeling of claustrophobia you would get from the regular version has been alleviated. All the text and boxes have proper breathing room now, and are quite easy on the eyes.

It does make one wonder if all of this couldn't have been done with a little bit of CSS instead? Sure you might have to exchange some of the very smooth eyecandy with something slightly more utilitarian - but it could be done. But, of course, Microsoft needs to show off its baby. It's probably safe to assume that once the final version releases that Microsoft will use it as a staging platform to really push Silverlight and try to take a bite out of Flash market share.

Thanks, George!

Microsoft's Adobe Flash competitor leaves its beta status behind today. The software maker has announced the availability of Silverlight 1.0, multimedia web browser plug-in.

Microsoft is also working with Novell on Silverlight support for Linux. The Linux project will be known as Moonlight, and is based on the Mono Project.

With today's announcement, Silverlight will be available for Windows, Mac, and Linux machines running browsers including Firefox and Internet Explorer.

[Thanks Dennis!]

Microsoft's new Tafiti web site isn't exactly a new search engine. It's powered by Microsoft's search, so you'll get exactly the same results from Tafiti, MSN.com or Live.com. So what's the point of Tafiti? It's pretty.

When you first visit the site, you're prompted to install Silverlight if you haven't already. Then you're presented with a lot of empty space and a search box. When you enter your search term, you're subjected to a little flurry of activity. On the lower left side of the screen, a bunch of icons pop up. Click on them to see images representing your search results, RSS feeds that match your search terms, or a newspaper-like view.

You can also drag search results into slots on the right of the screen for saving, e-mailing, or blogging on Windows Live Spaces. If you're interested in all the bells and whistles, Tafiti is great. If you just want quick search results, you're probably better off with Live Search, Yahoo! or Google.

[via TechCrunch]

Microsoft, the captains of closed source, have officially taken the first steps to support Ruby within the .Net environment, a move seen as a way to cozy up to the upcoming generation of hardcore web developers who've cut their teeth on the Ruby language.

Released under the "Microsoft Permissive License", IronRuby uses the Dynamic Languages Runtime to get the job done. Support at this point is extremely preliminary, but Microsoft says it hopes to release IronRuby on RubyForge, and take submissions and additions from the wider community. Eventually, support for Ruby apps on Microsoft's Silverlight platform will be forthcoming; a bit of good news for a fair number of developers

The largest hurdle towards widespread adoption of Microsoft's Flash/AIR competitor "Silverlight" may have just gotten a little smaller. Miguel De Icaza, developer of the open source .Net-alike platform Mono and star employee of Novell has recently mentioned on his blog that he and a team of develpoers have been putting in extremely long days to implement Microsoft's new portable platform on Linux.

Dubbed "Moonlight", the project isn't ready for release just yet but Icaza published some excellent screenshots and is currently showing off his new baby to ReMix 2007 conference in France.

The addition of a competitive platform to Flash on Linux could mean we'll see Adobe step up development efforts. The short story -- and our sincere hope -- is, that could mena much shorter waits for equal Flash versions to our Windows pals.

[via The Inquirer]

So Apple went and released Safari for Windows. It is interesting why Apple did this. Safari may be faster, as the Royal Steveness claimed, and provides a number of nice features that are not in IE7 or Firefox by default (e.g. Forms auto-fill and resizable text fields) but I am not sure it would get much traction in the long term once the novelty factor has worn off.

Steve Jobs also announced that 3rd party developers will get access to the iPhone via web apps. Traditionally, cell phone application development is 'hard'. Hard in the sense that, by nature, cell phone manufactures are not software companies, so either the software development kit (SDK) use lower level languages (C++, etc.), an unsupported developer community (compare with web or desktop development), or antiquated OS (Palm OS 5.x). Whereas web development has a much lower learning curve as well as much bigger pool of developers to pull from.

It is obvious, at least to me, that releasing Safari for Windows is primarily a move to open up the iPhone's development environment to the largest audience possible. If Apple were to actually make a proper SDK for the iPhone, it would mean the SDK would have to support the Cocoa framework on OS X, and either port Cocoa to Windows (possible), or use 3rd party framework for Windows (not likely, given how much Apple likes to be in control). Either way, I doubt this hypothetical SDK would be OS X only, and asking 3rd party developers to purchase a Mac just to develop for the iPhone would be the death keel that many have been predicting.

In today's mobile Minute, we'll take a look at some of the latest news and software related to Windows Mobile devices.

Silverlight coming to Windows Mobile

Microsoft's Silverlight technology is taking aim squarely at Adobe's Flash, which currently dominates interactive video on the web. But one area where Flash implementation has never been very good is mobile devices. It looks like Silverlight could be the platform of choice for interactive mobile web applications.

Check out this interview with .NET Compact Framework Principle Product Unit Manager Scott Holden for a look at a prototype of Silverlight running on a Smartphone.

CoreCLR, cross-platform .Net Framework, DLR, Silverlight, the list goes on! But what is so great about them all, you ask? Currently we have the .Net Framework with ASP.NET AJAX and a library of free components to help web developers. But despite what those web monkeys try to convince us desktop developers, web programming sucks in general, and JavaScript/CSS in particular, because we have to deal with the web browser and the messy standard(s).

Netflix is showing off a new version of their browser-based "watch now" feature at the Mix '07 conference in Las Vegas. By building the new feature with Microsoft Silverlight, Netflix has expanded the feature set, as well as building compatibility for alternate browser like Firefox, and operating systems like Mac OS X.



Basically, the program transforms your browser window into a complete movie-viewing interface with DVD-like functionality. You can:

• Fast forward and rewind
• Browse by chapter
• Double-click to make the movie play in full-screen
• Add movies to your Netflix Queue
• Rate movies
• Find similar movies through Netflix

[via WebWare]

The CEO of Adobe has a few words on Microsofts newest release, Silverlight, and they aren't as harsh as expected.

Adobe just released a Flash-based Media Player called Adobe Media Player. It's an online and offline player that is capable of tagging, rating, and sharing videos and runs off of the new Apollo rich internet application development platform. Needless to say, Microsoft bit back by releasing a Flash competitor called Silverlight. It's a next generation, cross platform, cross browser web client runtime that allows for the playback of rich interactive applications.

Bruce Chizen, the CEO of Adobe shared a few thoughts about the Silverlight platform in an interview today in Tokyo. Chizen believes that Microsoft might not be committed to keeping its platform compatible with other operating systems beside Windows, since they have demonstrated their stand with other applications. On the other hand, Flash has been around for over 10 years, works strongly with every platform, and has become the industry standard and is used on top sites like YouTube to deliver streaming video across the web.

Check out the rest of the interview here.

Microsoft Silverlight, in Microsoft's wording, is a next-generation, cross-platform, cross-browser web client runtime. In other words, a Flash competitor.

This is a runtime that will allow the playback of files using various forms of interactivity on both PC and Mac platforms. Silverlight will essentially deliver rich interactive applications for the web that incorporate video, animation, and interactivity. It also has the ability to run in fullscreen HD video mode while supporting 720p video, and through mobile devices.

Will this be a flash killer? Only time will tell, but Microsoft sure looks like they are pushing the whole rich and compelling web experience angle. There are more details as to Silverlights capabilities in an MSDN blog post. No word as to whether Microsoft will add support for Linux as of yet.

Check out the competition which also just launched this past weekend, Adobe Media Player, a standalone flash video player.