If you're into Silverlight, and you should be, check out http://www.silverlightchallenge.eu, and especially sign up on http://slovenia.silverlightchallenge.eu and join one of our many developers who will participate in this competition.

More here.

Jamie Cansdale of TestDriven.NET fame just posted an intro post describing the hosting of Silverlight's CLR - CoreCLR.

Having the ability to host the runtime inside a Win32/.NET process brings up new possibilities, especially running Silverlight apps outside the browser or developing test harnesses/unit tests for Silverlight intended object models.

Silverlight 1.1 alpha and CoreCLR currently expose a very trimmed down version of the Framework's BCL. This will change by RTM, but be aware that its sweet spot is still the browser.

I can imagine a world where Silverlight apps will not only be media/presentation related. Currently, the competing platform, though having a strong install base, has not reached into that space.

You could arm Flash developers with rocket launchers, but they would still lose a battle war against .NET developers armed with chopsticks. Every day of the week and twice on Sunday. I believe the number of souls will significantly influence the outcome in this case.

Today, Microsoft.com put a Silverlight enabled video of XBox 360 Elite on the site front page.

This must be one of the earliest technology adoptions for Microsoft.com. They host a 1.0 beta version of the Silverlight app and it got me thinking why would a high traffic site want to do this.

My conclusion?

Answer this: What's the quickest way to install the Silverlight runtime to a broad user base without using a ship vehicle?

Admittedly, installing the runtime is quick, painless and benign for your machine. As it should be.

Try it out. Then visit some sample galleries.