Microsoft Takes The Pipes
Microsoft is alpha testing an interesting website mashup creator using drag and drop for the HTML-phobic. It's called Popfly. It's got a handsome interface. And ducks. Michael Calore over at Wired describes it wittily as: "Oh, it's what Yahoo Pipes would look like if it was on the Xbox."
Microsoft will be the free to the user, and will work with both Microsoft Explorer 6 (and higher) and Firefox 2.0. Each user will have a 25 MB storage limit. It will support the following content: JavaScript, AJAX libraries, HTML, XHTML, CSS, WMV, WMA, MP3, Visual Studio Express projects, JPG, PNG, GIF, and EXEs. Popfly is not yet available to the general public; you need to know someone who is testing it in order to receive an invitation.
Featuring a hot pink rubber duckie as the mascot, Popfly is has been built using Silverlight, Microsoft’s Flash-killing cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the “next generation of media experiences and rich interactive applications (RIA)” for the Web.
Like Yahoo Pipes on X-Box. Hmm. Hothardware would like to be known for a witty slogan for Popfly too. How about: It's like FrontPage on Steroids! Or: It's likeWikipedia on acid! Maybe: It's like AJAX on sliced bread...
