The big news out of CES for RIA watchers is the news that Microsoft Silverlight will be used, at least in part, on the website for the 2008 Olympics to be held later this year in Beijing. NBC Universal, who owns the sole rights to the Olympics in the US, will team up with Microsoft and deliver enhanced video for the Beijing Olympics using the Silverlight platform.

The press release doesn't answer many questions that people have about this - namely what portion of the site will be based on Silverlight. This is a smart move for Microsoft, but likely won't have much effect on the distribution of the Silverlight plugin. For the last summer Olympics in Athens, NBCOlympics.com had only 13 million unique visitors for the entire event. In comparison, Adobe Flash Player is installed about 8 million times per day. If those numbers stay the same, Adobe will install more versions of the Flash Player a full week (7 days) before any track and field medals are given out.

More commentary is available online at Ryan Stewart's blog, TechCrunch, and Beet.tv.