Book Review: Foundations of Popfly. Rapid Mashup Development

Foundations of Popfly: Rapid Mashup Development by Eric Driffin is a must read for SharePoint developers wanting to stay ahead of the curve. Though the author doesn't make a direct connection to SharePoint, it is obvious that this mashup development environment will have an impact on the SharePoint world (I should point out that this conclusion is something I've reached on my own and not a company statement or roadmap). For those that have not heard the name, Popfly is a Mashup development tool that makes mashup creation something almost anyone can do. Mashups are basically ways of taking various streams of data and presenting them in the same presentation or visualization. Very cool examples can be built with little code and its web based designer is a tool that business users will feel very comfortable with. Of course there is still some goodness for developers as they can extend the platform by creating their own blocks. This book is an easy read with lots of pictures and samples to get you through the basics. Eric includes a bit of history of how mashups have come about but everything else is hands-on examples. There is even an example of creating your own block in Visual Studio. You won't really need to write any code until the last few chapters of the book and if you are approaching this as a developer, be sure to brush up on those javascript skills. Here is an an amazon.com link