The Silverlight platform is Microsoft’s answer to Adobe Flash, allowing developer to write rich media applications for the web or for computers. And Moonlight is an open source implementation of Silverlight designed to run Silverlight apps on Linux. Now the developers of Moonlight are working to port the project to Android.

That means you may be able to run some Silverlight apps on Android eventually, using a browser or maybe even a native app.

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Want to watch YouTube on your shiny new Windows Phone 7 handset? You can… but since Google hasn’t released an official app and because Microsoft didn’t bake support into the operating system, you’re going to have to rely on a third party app.

A few days ago HTC released a free app for anyone with a Windows Phone 7 device built by the handset maker.

But if you don’t have an HTC phone, it turns out you can also pay $1.99 for an app called RealTube which will let you watch YouTube on WP7. Oh yeah, it also lets you view content from a number of other Flash video sites including CNN, DailyMotion, FunnyorDie, MySpace, and MSN.

The app converts Adobe Flash video to Silverlight, which is necessary because Windows Phone 7 doesn’t currently support Flash.

RealTube isn’t a complete YouTube app, meaning it won’t let you manage your YouTube account, view updates from your friends, or all those other features you would expect from a dedicated YouTube app.

The company offers a 15 day free trial if you want to check out RealTube before paying for it.

WP Central posted a demo video, which you can check out after the break.

Update: It turns out that while Windows Phone 7 doesn’t officially support HTML5 or Flash in the browser, there’s also a YouTube plugin from Microsoft which lets you click on any YouTube video from your browser to open it in a YouTube player. It also adds a shortcut for YouTube to your list of applications, but basically it just opens m.youtube.com in your browser. via PocketNow

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Microsoft has officially released Silverlight for the Symbian smartphone operating system. You can download Silverlight from the Nokia Ovi Store. Right now, it officially supports Nokia S60 5th Edition devices including the Nokia N97 and Nokia 5800 XPressMusic.

Silverlight is sort of Microsoft’s answer to Adobe Flash. It allows users to access rich media content in a web browser. It’s already available for Mac and PC, but Symbian is the first mobile platform to support Silverlight. The image above shows what the Silverlight version of Microsoft’s Bing weather page looks like on a Symbian device.

Microsoft wants developers to use Silverlight as one of the primary development platforms for mobile apps for Windows Phone 7, but that operating system isn’t expected to support in-browser Silverlight apps or video when it launches later this year.

via ZDNet

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Windows Phone 7 Series may not support full fledged multitasking. But thanks to Silverlight, it can support some pretty nifty 3D graphics effects. A group of developers showed off some neat, but mostly pointless tricks at the Tech Ed India conference recently.

The first tech demo shows a way to visualize all of your open web browser tabs in a 3D cube which you can spin around and around. Honestly, I can think of a few dozen better ways to navigate between browser tabs. But it sure is purty looking. You can check out a video below.

The second tech demo is just as pointless, but also just as cool. It shows a utility that lets you play a video — and then tilt it vertically or horizontally without disturbing the video playback. You can find a video of that below too.

via PocketNow

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Microsoft is expected to launch Windows Phone 7 Series later this year. And when it does, there will be third party applications available from some major players in the mobile space, including Pandora, Fandango, Foursquare, EA Mobile, the Associated Press, Seesmic, Shazam, and Sling.

Of course, all of those companies have apps for other platforms including iPhone and Android, so these apps are hardly going to set Windows Phone 7 Series apart from the crowd. But Microsoft is also starting to talk about the developer program for its next-generation mobile operating system. And that could open the door to some pretty innovative new apps.

First up, you’ll be able to try applications before purchasing them, which is pretty cool. Microsoft is also announcing the free tools that will be available for developers, including Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone, XNA Game Studio 4.0, and a Windows Phone 7 Series Emulator for testing applications.

Applications will also be built using Microsoft’s Silverlight technology, to enable “rich internet applications.” Developers will be able to access core functions of Windows Phone 7 Series devices including the accelerometer, hardware video acceleration, multitouch features, access to the camera and microphone, and push notifications even if an app isn’t running.

One of the most exciting apps is the Netflix app for Windows Phone 7 Series. Like the Netflix app for other platforms, it will let you view and organize your Netflix video rental queue. But the cool part is that you’ll actually be able to stream “watch Instantly” titles from the Netflix web site to your phone. That makes sense, since the Netflix streaming feature is built on Silverlight. But it’s still a pleasant surprise.

For more details on the developer platform, you can check out a blog post written by Anand Iyer from the Windows Phone team.

You can also find a video overview of the new Windows Phone Marketplace in-device app store at Engadget.

via Engadget and Gizmodo

With all the talk about Adobe Flash coming to Android, Windows Mobile, WebOS, and other mobile platforms, it’s easy to forget that Microsoft has a Flash competitor called Silverlight. And it looks like the beta version of Silverlight for the Symbian smartphone operating system is almost ready to go.

ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley spotted a download page for Silverlight beta for Symbian on Thursday. The site has since disappeared, indicating that the beta might not have been quite ready for prime time — or maybe Microsoft just wanted to make more of an official announcement next week. But Foley reports that the description for the download explained that the beta version of Silverlight was available for Nokia S60 5th Edition devices.

Microsoft is also expected to develop versions of Symbian for Android, and of course, Windows Phone 7 Series.