Microsoft Popfly - The Open Beta
Microsoft announced today at the Web 2.0 Summit that Microsoft Popfly, our Silverlight-based Mashup Editor, will enter a Public Beta, and no longer be invitation-only. This is great news for fans of the popular Popfly as they will no longer have to go around looking for people with invitations to share with them - anyone who is interested in learning more about, and producing a Popfly Mashup can do so!
In the spirit of fun, I've created a couple of mashups to share, one based on my Flickr photos, and one based on my friends Twitters, and incorporated them into a Popfly Webpage. These mashups and web pages are SUPER EASY to create - you simply drag-and-drop Popfly "Building Blocks" in place, and then wire the blocks together with simple property assignments. Depending on the block, Popfly is usually smart enough to wire up the properties for you so it doesn't usually take more than a few clicks to make your own mashup!
If the block you're looking for doesn't exist, you can easily create your own blocks - they're only Javascript scripts that can be easily edited online in the Popfly application, or we recommend you use Microsoft Visual Web Developer (VWD) as it provides really nice Javascript debugging. If you use Visual Studio, there is also a Visual Studio Popfly Explorer that you can download and install to remotely manage your Popfly pages.
Once you get your mashups completed, you share them with your friends either through Popfly itself, or on the web by creating Popfly-hosted web pages (as I've done), embed them in your own web pages or blogs, hosting them as Windows Vista Sidebar Gadgets, or on Windows Live Spaces.
Here are some links for more information about Popfly
- https://popflyteam.spaces.live.com/ (Team Blog - gives a full list of features)
- https://slickthought.net (Jeff Brand also has a contest going!)
- https://geekswithblogs.net/jjulian (Popfly Podcast from Jeff Julian)
- https://blog.lozanotek.com (Microsoft community opinion on the Popfly tool)
- https://blog.dennyboynton.com (Popfly relevancy for the Architect)
- https://blogs.msdn.com/benko (developer perspective on mashups, in general)
So - join the beta today by visiting https://www.popfly.com, create a mashup, and post your link in a comment on this post. Let's see just how many different mashups we can create by the end of October! For the most creative entry, as recorded as a link on the comments for this post, I'll reward the mashup creator with a brand new copy of Halo 3 on November 1st!
Technorati Tags: PopflyHDC07 , Popfly , Mashups , Silverlight , .NET , Vista