Barko Germany said they are also new ways for a political convention to use technology. “The political world is in love with video on the Internet” to craft messages, mobilize a base of support and perhaps even demystify what’s largely a political insider’s event, she said. Independent bloggers play into the “fascination with being more open and bringing voters in,” despite any potential fears by convention organizers of losing control, she added. (Also read The Web 2.0 Campaign for the White House.)

Selecting and credentialing bloggers, from a pool of more than 400 applications, to represent each of the 50 states and U.S. territories may be a fresh concept, but the technology is not. The DNCC simply needs to provide cables for high-speed Internet access to enable each blogger to post from the convention floor. Plus, its demconvention.com[link] site will display the external links to the blogs and provide a mechanism for visitors to sign up for RSS feeds. Beyond that, the bloggers largely will be on their own.

Democrats’ Plans Rely on Beta Version of Silverlight 2

The technology behind the high-definition streaming video, by contrast, is a pioneering venture. The DNCC plans to use Microsoft Corp.’s new Silverlight 2 cross-platform, cross-browser plug-in to deliver rich media and interactive applications. Silverlight 2 isn’t even due for public release until the fall, so the DNCC will use beta software, according to Microsoft.

“There are some incredible applications that have been built on this platform, and it’s becoming more and more popular,” said Aaron Myers, the DNCC’s director of online communications, mentioning NBC’s plan to use Silverlight 2 to stream high-quality Olympic footage. “Some of the features that you can bring to video on Silverlight, without revealing what we’re going to do, are pretty impressive – things that other people are not doing in video.” (NBC Sports also plans to use Silverlight in its web-based videos during the upcoming Beijing Olympics.)

One of Silverlight 2’s distinguishing characteristics is that, as a subset of Microsoft’s .Net Framework, it can be used with .Net development tools. Silverlight 1.0, released a year ago, had “little uptake because it was essentially a JavaScript-centric media player plug-in,” according to Gartner Inc. Silverlight 2, in contrast, is a substantial technical step forward for Microsoft as it strives to compete with Adobe’s popular Flash and Flex, a Gartner report in March stated.

Democratic convention officials said they are aware that Silverlight 2 is still in beta and reiterated their confidence in the new release and the convention’s partnership with Microsoft.