Staring today through Dec. 31st, Blockbuster will be premiering Jackass 2.5 online. How is this done you might ask? Well, through the Silverlight technology of course. Silverlight adoption is continuing to grow as we’ve seen with other customers such as  MLB.com, NBA.com, BMW, Baidu, Entertainment Tonight (CBS/Paramount), Ice Cube’s UVNTV.com and of course the WWE to name a few. You can find many more examples of Silverlight usage at http://silverlight.net/Showcase.

I would like to thank everyone who took the time and effort to Blog about the recent InstallFests in Chicago and Indianapolis. I hope for those folks who weren’t able to attend the event, are able to live vicariously through your text and pictures that captured the event. I also hopes this springs an opportunity for each of you to find who the bloggers are in your community. Link to one another. Post comments on each other’s blogs. Embrace and extend the conversations!

I encourage you to continue blogging about your experiences with Visual Studio as well as your experiences within and around the development community.

With that, I would like to announce the winners of the Blog contest for Chicago and Indianapolis. They are…

Chicago: Karim Ali

Indianapolis: Chris Hubbard

Congratulations! Both of you will be receiving a Zune 80GB. Just in time for the holidays.

The fun doesn’t stop there y’all. On Wednesday, I will be announcing the “My Favorite VS2008/.NET 3.5 Feature” blog contest, where everyone will have an opportunity to participate and win a Zune 80GB. Take your new copy of Visual Studio 2008 and dig into some of the exciting new features and figure out what you want to blog about. If you weren’t able to attend any of the InstallFests, you can download a trial copy of Visual Studio 2008 and start digging. Come back Wednesday for the official announcement and rules.

As you know, the weather put a damper on the Milwaukee InstallFest last Tuesday. I’m happy to say that they great WI-INETA folks from the frozen tundra were able to re-schedule the event before the holidays. Nothing has changed about the event except the date. This means that…Yes, we will have a demo challenge… Yes, we will have the blogging challenge… Yes, and more important, we will have a toy drive. Bring a toy that will be sure to find a special home on Christmas morning and you could walk home with your own special toy. If you are unable to bring a toy, a cash donation to http://toysfortots.org will suffice as well.

Unfortunately, I will not be able to make it to the Milwaukee InstallFest as I have customer meetings to attend to. I left the master-of-ceremony duties in capable hands with my colleague, Larry Clarkin. Larry will also be providing details on the Blogging/Picture Post challenge.

Have fun, all!

Tonight I’m with the Indianapolis .NET Developers Association for their holiday party. What better way to celebrate than hand out 175 copies of Visual Studio 2008 Professional! This is our third InstallFest in the Midwest District (only 2nd one executed as Milwaukee was canceled but will be rescheduled) and what has blown me away from these events is the generosity of the group members and their donations for our toy drive (pictures to come soon). What else has me giddy with excitement is the great demos we’ve seen in our demo challenges. We’ve also seen some great blog posts sharing the experience of the InstallFests for those unfortunate folks who couldn’t make it in person.

So now…the challenge goes out to you Indianapolis! Submit your blog posts and picture links here. Remember the rules. Submit a comment to this post (Indianapolis only) linking back to your blog post sharing the InstallFest experience from Indy. For those of you who brought your digital cameras, post your pictures up at Flickr or Windows Live Photo Gallery and provide a link back here as well. I will draw from those submissions and award a lucky person a spanking new Zune 80GB! The deadline is Sunday, Dec. 17th at 11:59 pm. I will announce the winner on Monday morning, Dec. 18th.

Good luck to you all and thank you for joining us for the VS2008 InstallFest!

The InstallFest schedule for Milwaukee this evening has been canceled due to weather concerns. Keep an eye on http://wi-ineta.org and this blog for re-scheduling details.