"other than it being from the evil empire"

It from Microsoft, not Apple.

Australian Personal Computer ran a series on using it.
That's a magazine worth the subscription price for us down under if you want to keep up with what's happening.

Bob.

actually jc i think they're ALL evil empires ;-)

bob, i used to subscribe when i had my business (along with brw, time (to give my intellectually challenged clients something to read while i sorted out their messes), and a few other mags too. i agree it's a great mag.

however, neither of you two wonders answered my question(s) .

do i need to worry my few remaining brain cells over silverlight / ogg, et al?

have a great new year,

leslie

btw, do we have netflix or similar here (download, not dvds)?

"actually jc i think they're ALL evil empires ;-)"

Oh yeah, I want to rely on the open source community for all my software needs.

Silverlight is basically Microsoft's answer to Adobe's Flash. Personally, Flash suits my needs just fine for the time being.

as it is jc, i'm using open office, vlc, audacity, attempting to learn gimp, etc., mainly because i teach and i'd prefer my students to start off with floss before moving on to either cracked or paid for software.

have to say i have no problems with flash either....

To answer your original queston, you might elect to ignore it and flash for that matter.
Both are not just a codec. They're both a content delivery system that can be interactive as well. For example I believe Silverlight lets you build a 3D space that's interactively rendered on the client side. Flash I don't think goes that far but not really part of my point here.
What I see as the big issue is should we as videographers or editors be involved in this as well, seems we've got enough on our plate. Yet despite my best efforts at avoiding getting sucked into the vortex I have the on2 flv encoder and have had to try as best I can to hand hold web developers who didn't know what frame size , fps, etc they needed the flv video at.
Now I'm certain there's people here who are quite comfortable writing all the code involved in all this gee wizz interactive stuff and certainly Adobe seem to make it as easy as possible but it seems to me one can quickly become a jack of all trades master of none kind of one man band the way things are headed. I'm just happy enough getting clean images, clean sound and edits that don't make me cringe. The remaining 1 hour in my day I like to eat, sleep and try to remember the names of my kids.

Bob.

oh bob, have you hit the nail on the the head or what!!!

one of the reasons i 'retired' was simply that it was all getting somewhat out of hand. i had marketing mba's asking for 'obscure' encoding (some fly by night format they'd read about on the net), through to web designers complaining that my video looked awful AFTER they'd compressed it...

it was bad enough that i'd had to 'do' all of it for the last few years (no budget for graphics, audio sweetening, fx, animation, etc., etc.,) but then to start having to deal with the net and all it's foibles...

i asked the question originally because i'm somewhat isolated out here, but that doesn't stop me being interested in what's happening, and perhaps picking up a new 'format / codec / talent' that might be useful to my now somewhat smaller clientele base - after all, the reason they continue seeking me out is that i do as good a job as i can for them with the knowledge / tools i have, and they know it.

i still tell them 'i don't know', or maybe they should ask someone else regarding things they've heard or read about that i've not. unfortunately it isn't usually a simple case of googling - in these matters you need to hear it from professionals, the people working with, or refusing to work with the ? in question.

that's why i appreciate the time and trouble taken by bob (my local guru), and the many others on this ng without whose help and advice i'd probably still be rock 'n' rolling on my old callaway....

leslie