Popfly could let everyone mash-up...

There's something new over at the Microsoft camp, it could be very cool, and it's name is Popfly. Now I don't have an invite so I'm only going by what I've read on the Popfly site and other blogs but it does seem that this is a lot like Yahoo! Pipes on steroids. The promise is that you will use the set of online visual tools to create mashups, gadets and even web pages. You'll be able to share them with other users by grabbing the code and getting the user to add them within an Iframe on their site (something I personally hate but if it's good enough for Google). Making use of Silverlight, is a step forward and makes the whole thing look slick. There is also the Popfly Explorer which works with Visual Studio. Watch the Popfly how-to video for a better look at how it works. I'm strangely divided about this offering from Microsoft. Personal experience with the software they've offered, in the past, for building anything on the web has never put out anything but a ton of over-complicated junk, but their tools are easy to pick up and ubiquitous and the teams have now made great strides in cleaning up their output. This could be a great tool to extend the web from the root users up, but it could also be the arbiter harbinger of the return of sensory overload homepages so prevalent in the 90's.

Technorati tags: popfly, microsoft, web2.0, mashups