Sam Chenaur, Platform Strategy Advisor for Microsoft, wrote a great entry covering our collaboration with Identity Mine and InfoSpace. The project set out to design a new toolbar that utilizes the power of Silverlight™ technology to perform engaging interactions beyond current experiences. InfoSpace currently offers wallpapers and recipes, but they have set out plans to extend this service through the simple, yet functional shell, such as weather, music and horoscopes.
Chenaur also points out the benefits of an RIA implementation, which extends the idea of the conventional toolbar:
The use of a rich interactive technology, like Silverlight, to power a user interactivity is important as it creates an engaging experience for the user. Unlike other toolbars available today, crammed with indistinguishable icons, the toolbars developed by InfoSpace are a fresh experience with simple, elegant and consistent user experiences. Each toolbar sort of act as a Rich Interactive Application (RIA) that happens to live at the top of your browser.