InXile Entertainment has collaborated with Microsoft to build a new version of the Line Rider game, making use of Microsoft's Silverlight technology and Windows Live Services. The new Line Rider uses Silverlight to provide a robust and intuitive game editing environment, and integrated Live Messenger provides a way for users to chat while editing tracks, and to share them.

http://www.cynergysystems.com/news/linerider.jsp
http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2008/06/30/line-rider-in-silverlight-2.aspx

mms://wm.microsoft.com/ms/windowsserver/compare/BreakVideo.wmv

As a popular entertainment site with an advertising-based revenue model, Break.com must support high traffic volumes while enticing Web site visitors to spend time on the site. The company handles up to 35 million page views per day with only two Web server computers.

"That's the thing that I don't think a lot of people on the LAMP stack realize. [...] I think you'll find that Microsoft technologies compare very well individually. But that misses the big picture: Microsoft has created a platform that simply lets me architect and build applications in a way that I can't on LAMP.”

Nick Wilson, CTO, Break.com 

Windows Server comparison Q&A for microsoft.com
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver/compare/interviewdetails.mspx?recid=23

Case study on .NET, Windows Server, SQL and Silverlight
http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000002034 

http://www.kbb.com/kbb/PerfectCarFinder/PhotoEdition.aspx

Kelley Blue Book leveraged .NET 3.5 SP1 to cut the head off their .NET Web Solution. They now leverage a mode-view-controller architecture so that they can get direct access to the necessary logic.

This enables them to serve new experiences on mobile devices and through Silverlight 2.  With the use of SL2, deeper user engagement will sell more Ads.  Users want data when they’re on the lot looking at cars – on their mobile devices.

http://promotions.newegg.com/silverlight/DC/index.html

Newegg wanted to create a deeper and more engaging experience for their customers.  It wanted to enhance the UX of their customers by creating a RIA with functional and powerful features that are intuitive.

Newegg built a DeepZoom catalog built on Silverlight 2.  A power search function was added, so when a customer is browsing they just need to enter a keyword, select “Go” and the results are presented in a much richer way.  The application has a slider bar that adjusts the search results by allowing the customer to drag the bar or each end separately which narrows or widens the search.   The results are updated and displayed as the bar is adjusted.  If the customer wants to look at a product more closely, a deep zoom feature is available which can zoom into the surface details of products in the HD clarity.

http://blogs.msdn.com/sac/pages/council-2009q2.aspx

ARCHITECT COUNCIL | Pragmatic Patterns for Architects

“Cloud computing will supersede traditional IT”, “SOA will enable business agility”, “my way or the highway”, etc.  We’ve all heard this type of proclamations before, as many look to the “next big things” in technology to exact sweeping changes and solve many issues; truth is, technologies and tools aren’t as instrumental in influencing progress, as the design and discipline in applying them to specific issues. When used appropriately, technologies and tools can be powerful enablers that bring about change.

One of the things we hear a lot working with the community is a desire for more guidance about how to use the technology instead of just talking about features and functions.  To address this, our team has put together a series of live webcasts on June 9th – 11th which will focus on guidance and patterns for some of today’s hottest topics. 

Patterns for Moving to the Cloud
Larry Clarkin & Wade Wegner

Everything that you read these days seems to suggest that you should be moving to the cloud. But where do you start? Which applications and services should be moving to the cloud? How do you build the bridge between on-premises and the cloud? And more importantly, what should you be looking out for along the way? In this session, learn architectural patterns and factors for moving to the cloud. Based on real-world projects, the session explores building block services, patterns for exposing applications, and challenges involving identity, data federation, and management. This session provides the tools and knowledge to determine whether cloud computing is right for you, and where to start.

Building Silverlight & WPF Applications with Prism
David Hill

Prism provides guidance, via design patterns, to help you build robust, flexible and modular Silverlight and WPF applications. These patterns support unit testing, separation of concerns, loose coupling and the ability to share application logic between Silverlight and WPF applications. Prism includes source code for the library itself, extensive documentation, and a sample application that shows how the patterns work together in a real-world application. It also includes a Visual Studio add-in to help you easily share code between WPF and Silverlight. This session provides an overview of Prism, and shows how you can use Prism to design and build composite Silverlight applications.

Patterns for Parallel Computing
David Chou

With recent advances in cloud computing, service-oriented architectures, distributed computing, server virtualization, multi-core processors; we are now seeing parallel computing techniques being implemented across the spectrum.  It’s moving towards mainstream applications such as internet-scale web applications, massive data processing, graphics rendering, but the myriad of choices also present a number of questions on when and how to utilize parallel computing. This session explores the architectural patterns and trade-offs between different forms of parallel computing including:  approaches for utilizing them to improve application performance, optimizing the use of existing infrastructure, and applying concurrency towards day-to-day enterprise information processing needs.