Even a chimp can write code

Friday, May 18, 2007

We Popfly High, No Lie, You Know It

With what it states as "another piece in [Microsoft's] company-wide outreach in helping non-professional developers build everything from Xbox games to Robotics to custom Web applications using Windows Home Server", Microsoft today announced a new service called Popfly.Microsoft PopflyIt comprises a set of online visual tools so non-programmers can create web experiences, and a social aspect involving a community watering hole where people and view, share, remix and rate content. And did I mention Popfly was built using Silverlight? Popfly is currently accepting limited participants for its private alpha.

Personally speaking, Soma's and John Montgomery's talk about extending tools like Visual Studio to the Live world, is starting to make sense. Of course, this is just a step in that direction. John was kind enough to give us on the Silverlight team a sneak peek at Popfly at a Friday Beer Bash some weeks ago. As a fan of UNIX Pipes programming paradigm, I was immediately fascinated by some aspects of the Popfly Creator. We'd have loved to have shown this off circa Mix 07, but John and team rightly were looking at Maker Faire as the correct avenue to showcase this.

See one such Popfly creation in action here.

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