May 18
Microsoft launches Popfly and integrates with Spaces
This morning, the Developer Division group within Microsoft announced the alpha version launch of an new product called Popfly.
Popfly is a tool designed to help non-programmers create mashups of content, feeds, and other interesting sources and publish them for their own personal use or for the larger community to use. The tool is web-based and allows you to drag and drop “blocks” onto a working surface and connect various data sources together. For example, you can snap together a built-in Windows Live Spaces photos block of your pictures and a Silverlight photo visualizer block to provide a rich, interactive display of your Spaces photos.
One of the coolest thing about Popfly is that once you create a mashup, you can, in just a few clicks, publish it directly to your space as a gadget using the “Add to Windows Live Spaces” link.
It is currently in a limited Alpha, but has gotten good reviews so far from sources including Techcrunch and Mary Jo Foley from ZDNet. Check out a video demonstration here.
Sign up for the waiting list here and also keep your eyes open over the next few months for an invitation from one of the Alpha users. Get ready to have some fun creating cool Spaces mashups!
-Chris
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