Yesterday, the Country Music Association (CMA) and Microsoft teamed up at the CMA Music Festival in Nashville to bridge the divide between the country music world and the world of technology. Using Silverlight Deep Zoom, Microsoft and partner Firefly Logic built a rich and compelling user experience for CMA showcasing 850+ images of country music artists, highlighting past festivals, fan experiences and country music performances in a fun, game-oriented format called “Be This Close.” Of course, ordinarily displaying such a large panorama of images would not an optimal experience because of image loading lag time. Deep Zoom makes this incredibly rich user experience possible by loading progressively higher resolution images, creating a “blurry to crisp” experience for users that enables them to view hundreds of images and zoom in crisp high-res detail without a marked wait time. Check out the Deep Zoom experience for yourself at http://www.cmafest.com/bethisclose.  CMA will be promoting the Be This Close experience to radio stations around the country starting this week.