Hugh Hefner, meet Bill Gates. Microsoft's Silverlight technology may have lost Major League Baseball's online business to rival Adobe Flash last year, but the Redmond company has picked up another American icon with Playboy's use of Silverlight for an interactive archive.
Always diligent in our work, we've been dutifully testing the online application. Judging purely from a technology perspective, of course, it's a good showcase of Silverlight's capabilities, including the ability to smoothly browse the digital pages. The tables of contents are clickable, leading to fast navigation. It's also possible to search the full text of the articles -- which is no doubt the feature that gets the most use.
The online application (do we need to mention it's not safe for work?) offers free access to selected Playboy magazines dating back to the mid 1950s, showing the pages exactly as they were published in print. The application was first shown last week at Microsoft's Mix conference.
"Playboy has an incredibly rich history and an intensely loyal readership," said Playboy founder Hefner in the news release announcing the application. "This is the perfect opportunity to offer them something they have always wanted and also a great way to allow a whole new generation to easily explore the magazine."
The application was created by Bondi Digital Publishing, which also developed the underlying technology for "The Complete New Yorker." More broadly, Playboy's choice of Silverlight for the application could be a good sign for Microsoft -- particularly if the old saying holds true about adult entertainment signaling the future direction of technology.
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