This year's Summer Olympics, which started on August 8, will also be available live over the Internet, as Microsoft announced a partnership with NBC Universal. The two will offer thousands of hours of free live videos with the Olympic games, which will certainly prove to be an extremely popular way of keeping up to date with the event's results.

The initiative will bring the audiences closer to their preferred sporting events from Beijing, making it possible to also view the less popular contests such as race walking and cycling, which have previously been rather neglected by television stations transmitting the games.

In order to gain full access to the videos, Olympics enthusiasts will have to download Microsoft Web browser software which uses a new technology called Silverlight, allowing the display of graphics, audio, video and interactive animations inside a Web browser display's fixed window.

Microsoft's officials are certain that Silverlight will determine a huge change for its users and will definitely light up the Web with its multimedia content.

A similar move was made by Google, offering its users the possibility of checking the Olympics' results directly on their cell phones. The search is available in 35 other languages. Another popular search engine, Yahoo, also prepared such a service for its users interested in the Beijing Olympics.

The event is expected to attract a massive worldwide interest, and these efforts to bring the experience closer to the fans will surely be received with great enthusiasm, especially by the people constantly on the road.