Microsoft's Silverlight (a direct competitor of Adobe's Flash) got its third version released tonight. This is ahead of the originally planned release date.

Since MS pushed Silverlight out the door there have been many companies that have adopted the new standard. One of the biggest was the adoption by Netflix for use in its streaming player.

This new version brings in over 50 improvements including adding support for Microsoft's Smooth Streaming and GPU acceleration (I bet the gang at nVidia are happy).

Smooth Streaming is probably going to have the biggest impact as it can allow for streaming of 720p video with no buffering. This is simply an amazing feat and one that is being integrated into the Zune HD and was used at the Jackson Memorial.

If this new version of Silverlight is any indication Adobe has its work cut out for them.

Grab Silverlight 3.0 here