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May 18, 2007

Microsoft Launches Popfly: Mashup App Creator Built On Silverlight

Nik Cubrilovic

171 comments »

Microsoft will announce the private beta launch of Popfly this morning, a new Silverlight application that allows users to create mashups, widgets and other applications using a very cool and easy to use web-based graphical interface. We previously covered the launch of Yahoo Pipes and compared five different applications that let you mix data and build applications online. At the time we mentioned how this space was really heating up - and how Pipes from Yahoo simplified the creation of mashups and mini-applications by providing a drag+drop interface. Microsoft are the latest entrants in this market, and they have completely leapfrogged every other application we have seen so far.

Popfly is a big leap forward from the competitors above because it lets you do so much more, and it is one of the nicest web application interfaces I have ever seen. With Popfly, you can create applications, mashups, web pages and widgets (gadgets) and it is all tied together in a social network (as part of the Live Spaces platform) where you can connect with other users and publishers of applications. Mashups are created by dragging in and connecting ‘blocks’ which produce an output. Blocks are modules that connect to various web services API’s, and even today there are dozens of different blocks that work with a whole variety of different web services.

See additional screen shots and a link to a screencast on the Popfly overview page here.

Seeing applications like Popfly coming out of Microsoft is something that I couldn’t have imagined all too long ago - and together with the recent Silverlight announcements (which we were also very excited about) the new Microsoft is really starting to come out through their product releases. Popfly so far seems to be another potential big hit from the new Microsoft under Ray Ozzie (Ozziesoft).

Invites: While the private beta is very limited (even within Microsoft), we do have TEN invitations to send out. Leave a comment about how you would use Popfly and the best (or funniest) ten will be sent an invitation to the application.

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This entry was posted on Friday, May 18th, 2007 at 6:20 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  4. web.XpunktNull.de » Popfly! Das klingt ja spannend!

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  5. Beyond | IT : Popfly - new Silverlight mash-up maker - is now alpha!

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  11. Echoes of Microsoft » Microsoft Launches Popfly: Mashup App Creator Built On Silverlight

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Comments

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  1. Tony Hung

    May 18th, 2007 at 6:25 am

    Hi,

    I’ll go first:

    How about a Truemors that doesn’t suck?

    (if that’s possible — which I think, it might be)

    Cheers
    tony @ dji

  2. Steve

    May 18th, 2007 at 6:26 am

    Please send an invite! I will be creating the next Digg-Google Maps-Flickr-Youtube-Twitter-MySpace mashup that will rock the world! But no one will ever use…

  3. directhealthsearch

    May 18th, 2007 at 6:27 am

    would like an invite please !

  4. Christian

    May 18th, 2007 at 6:28 am

    Looks good - particularly for Microsoft - hopefully it has less flaws than windows vista ;-)

    I would try to combine it with German and European apps…

  5. directhealthsearch

    May 18th, 2007 at 6:29 am

    Oh, you want a idea…

    porn + silverlight = even larger porn market

  6. pallet jack

    May 18th, 2007 at 6:31 am

    - INvite please - I dont have any ideas;

  7. Michael Arrington

    May 18th, 2007 at 6:32 am

    Nik - who defines “best” or “funniest”? Us or Microsoft? Could make a difference :-)

  8. Josh

    May 18th, 2007 at 6:32 am

    A mashup showing hamburger, burrito and roadfood reviews and recent home sales near the best burger joints.

  9. Satish

    May 18th, 2007 at 6:34 am

    I would love an invite. I’d use it to create a widget that has floating ducks that look like the ones on the Popfly page (http://www.popfly.ms/)… but the starting shot would have all of them be the same colour. Can’t make 1 feel left out like the pink one there…

  10. Ken

    May 18th, 2007 at 6:35 am

    Invite me, I’ll use it to build apps that bring the Blue Screen of Death online

  11. John

    May 18th, 2007 at 6:37 am

    Dear Nik if you’ll provide me with an invite I’ll ask Santa bring you something really cool next XMas ;)

  12. Dainius

    May 18th, 2007 at 6:37 am

    well. how about maps+real estate prices+events+weather+gdp+etc. mashup, providing calculation of life quality index for any u.s. place. formula is patented.

  13. Andy

    May 18th, 2007 at 6:45 am

    Flitterlight = Flickr + Twitter + Silverlight = please send invite!

  14. Nick

    May 18th, 2007 at 6:48 am

    I would love an invite. I plan on ruling the world with it. Not so much with Popfly, but with the actual invite.

    Thanks.

  15. Joshua

    May 18th, 2007 at 6:52 am

    I will use it to connect every system I can find together. They must do something cool if all connected right? google earth + chatbots + fickr + second life + hot or not = some fun! Then add in archive.org and wikipedia for the smartest app ever. Wierd Science come to life!

  16. David Duey

    May 18th, 2007 at 6:53 am

    Invite me! I’d like to create a mashup + social support network to help support people who are constipated. It’ll be called Poopfly or possibly shitter.

  17. Steve E

    May 18th, 2007 at 6:57 am

    Personally I’d use it to create a translation tool for comments on Flickr or other services by combining a translator with feeds from those services. That would be useful!

  18. Kieran

    May 18th, 2007 at 7:00 am

    I would like an invite to further enhance the social network of hamster owners I am creating. The interface will look like a giant hamster cage with dancing hamsters everywhere….pure awesomeness.

    BTW - to join A.H.O.o.t.W (Adult Hamster Owners of the World) please email me at: adulthamsterownersoftheworld[@]gmail[dot]com. Membership is $7.98 a month.

  19. lindstrom

    May 18th, 2007 at 7:01 am

    i’d like an invite to poopyfly please

  20. Startup Booster Blog

    May 18th, 2007 at 7:02 am

    Would love to get an invite please.

  21. Hari

    May 18th, 2007 at 7:04 am

    Its looks cool.
    I’d love to have an invite too.

  22. Steve Brewer

    May 18th, 2007 at 7:07 am

    Campaign season is upon us. I’ll build a mashup that takes info from candidates (speeches, events, appearances, etc), maps, videos and photos and mashes them together. A new perspective of the campaign trail.

    Maybe we’ll partner with shittr to provide a new and exciting way for candidates to fling virtual crap at each other.

  23. Rick

    May 18th, 2007 at 7:07 am

    Please invite me. I want to see what process it runs as when I have to kill it in task manager.

  24. Aram Krikorian

    May 18th, 2007 at 7:07 am

    I’ll windows Live! mashup Twitter + Truemors = Tumors, the next killer-app, ultimate super duper disruptive vroom vroom Kawasaki technology!

  25. Sean South

    May 18th, 2007 at 7:08 am

    With the invite I plan to put the internet into an infinite loop with a particulary devious recursive mash-up.
    Spiffing

  26. John

    May 18th, 2007 at 7:08 am

    I’d use popfly to create a widget that uses popfly to randomly connect together from 2 to 4 web APIs, and then evaluates the output for interestingness, publishing the most successful ones on its own blog. After 3 weeks promoting each new one, it would lose interest and stop maintaining the back-end in order to better devote AI time to the next one.

    invite please!

  27. john

    May 18th, 2007 at 7:08 am

    I will use this to create a — how you say? mashup? — of the Popfly logo with Flickr, thus enabling me to create an unlimited amount of Popfly desktop wallpapers: http://www.popfly.ms/Overview/Desktop.aspx

    I will also use it, in general, to DEMOCRATIZE DEVELOPMENT.

  28. Gary

    May 18th, 2007 at 7:09 am

    I would make a mashup of the plethora of information available for fantansy sports players. As a group they aren’t the most computer savy. They do offer the chance to speak to the coveted demographic (males 18-35). Sorry nothing funny here or particulary thought out, but this group of computer users could use some help.

  29. fox

    May 18th, 2007 at 7:12 am

    I’d use it to do an internal company employee membership service for a twitter like internal email/stock price chart correlation widget in real time.

  30. Steve Ballmer

    May 18th, 2007 at 7:12 am

    I’d use popfly to automatically generate patents on obvious and logical software improvements, then pin these one by one to a world map of open source project leaders so my legal team could threaten lawsuits in the hope of squeezing out licensing revenue.

    in fact, wait, I’m doing it now, so I don’t need an invite.

  31. Noel

    May 18th, 2007 at 7:13 am

    I want to use it to provide a method to communicate with family far away. Don’t want to pull the sympathy vote but the mashup would be all about our sick child.

  32. Derek Anderson

    May 18th, 2007 at 7:16 am

    Who farted?

    It stinks in here…must be all the begging.

    riiiiipppppp….can I have an invite?

  33. SorenG

    May 18th, 2007 at 7:16 am

    I would love an invite.

  34. Joshua

    May 18th, 2007 at 7:18 am

    @ Sean South - Infinite loop! Brilliant!

  35. Pedro Beltrao

    May 18th, 2007 at 7:21 am

    I would use it to test the potential for scientific mashups/ bioinformatics but that’s probably to geeky ;)

  36. Roy

    May 18th, 2007 at 7:21 am

    If it’s better than Y!Pipes, I want in. I use pipes for a news mashup and to pull tags from the articles. Love to check out a new player.

  37. Daniel B.

    May 18th, 2007 at 7:22 am

    I’ll use it to automatically get beta test invitations…

  38. David

    May 18th, 2007 at 7:23 am

    Hard to tell what it can be used for without getting access to it.

    But four ideas: strip the non-English-language posts out of del.icio.us/popular so I can more easily skip stuff I can’t read

    Aggregate several similar RSS feeds (eg tech news) down to a single feed by bundling similar stories together (all the stories mentioning AppleGate go in one post)

    The last two riff off Joshua: archive.org history of a URL as an RSS feed.

    Last.fm “Recently Played Tracks” feed with links to the artist’s Wikipedia page inserted - Wikipedia generally has a better summary of an artist than Last.fm

    If popfly allows you to embed your own silverlight code (publish your own blocks?), all of these are probably possible.

  39. Al Chumley

    May 18th, 2007 at 7:23 am

    I would use this to create an infinite loop with Yahoo Pipes to bring down the whole Web!

    Popfly - Mr Jiggy Fly’s dad? Sorry - reference to an old Geico commercial…

  40. Christoph Kluge

    May 18th, 2007 at 7:29 am

    A good (if not the best) reason to send ME an invite: It is meant to be, as in destiny. This invite has to be given to me in order to save the world. This is all you know and all you need to know right now. When the time is right, answers will follow. Good luck.

  41. Julia

    May 18th, 2007 at 7:30 am

    Would love an invite.

    I have an idea and it seems popfly is the technology to implement it with. It’s dating but with a twist. So, it s Flickr + maps + “a few secret ingredients” :)

  42. Michael Kamleitner

    May 18th, 2007 at 7:30 am

    I’ld like to build adapt the idea of twittervision to web-radio - display a worldmap with current song-titles of radio-stations all over the world popping up…data-sources would include metadata of icecast/shoutcast stations or scraped data from tracklists available on the web.

    hard to tell what’s possible and how far integration with silverlight goes…

  43. SharePoint Buzz

    May 18th, 2007 at 7:30 am

    I would love to have an invite… and try to mash SharePoint 2007 and Silverlight features for what? I dont know… how about a realtime stream of blog posts that are related to SharePoint 2007

  44. Craig

    May 18th, 2007 at 7:41 am

    I’ll be using the app to mash up and edit my new ‘Hi, I’m Silverlight. Hi, I’m Apollo.’ commercials.

  45. Dude

    May 18th, 2007 at 7:42 am

    number 16 up there should get all the invites.

  46. vijay

    May 18th, 2007 at 7:52 am

    Michael,
    Appolo or silverlight. I see some new chad hurleys looking for this appolication to be releases.

  47. fox

    May 18th, 2007 at 7:53 am

    If I got 2, I’d auction one off ebay and create a widget with the other to track the bids by location, price graph, profile pic, and user rating & comments. The person with a combination of best ratings and price would win.

    How’s that for community?

  48. Colin Dowling

    May 18th, 2007 at 7:56 am

    I sure could use an invite. I’m as interested in new technology and the companies featured on TechCrunch as anyone. I have notepads upon notepads of ideas I’d love to pursue.

    And outside of a little HTML, I can’t code a lick. I’ve been trying to learn/understand Y! Pipes and Dapper, but I still need an app that let’s me build things with the ability of a 3rd grade monkey.

    If Popfly fits the description - drag/drop, simple use, simple production of cool stuff - I would love a chance to try it out on behalf of those like me.

  49. Kieran

    May 18th, 2007 at 7:58 am

    My second attempt at an invite: No humor version.

    I would use popfly to create a uber-portal that would connect all of the blogs, feeds, fan sites and other information resources related to College Football. It would be the ultimate destination for a sport that has a unwavering and fanatical fan base.

  50. David Touve

    May 18th, 2007 at 7:59 am

    GoogleScholar+ PatentSearch + LiveMaps = The diffusion of ideas and knowledge, geographically, across the globe.

  51. Anthony Johnson

    May 18th, 2007 at 7:59 am

    hmm - i’d be interested in creating a tool to connect wine lovers, wine bars, and different wineyards together. Let’s find out what the best wine is, where to buy it for cheap, and where it is made… and then find other people out there with similar tastes.

  52. Anthony Johnson

    May 18th, 2007 at 8:00 am

    oh - wait… i want an invite - just check out post 51 for the description…. man, i need to learn how to post.

  53. Vagif Kuliyev

    May 18th, 2007 at 8:02 am

    I hope to use popfly and hopefully it’s API when and if it’s available, to integrate the aggregated data from users to build a MMORPG (virtual world). Integrating slight fantastical features with the social. Silverlight would be the perfect platform for this as it allows the creation of powerful user interfaces with background data interaction, a perfect combination to bringing multiplayer gaming to the web.

  54. Marcos

    May 18th, 2007 at 8:02 am

    I would create the ultimate mashup that harnesses the power of every Web 2.0 product to come up with even more Taco Bell foods utilizing the five ingredients that are used to create their entire current menu!

  55. dAwT

    May 18th, 2007 at 8:05 am

    I would use it to make Techchrunch better…
    …
    …
    …
    …
    Oh ****, it’s already te best site on the internet!

  56. Paul Thompson

    May 18th, 2007 at 8:05 am

    If I had an invitation for popfly I would basically just waste it. I mean, I’d love to login to it and mess around for a bit just to give silverlight a nice try. But other then that it would be a complete waste of 1/10 of the CrunchGear invites.

    So, in short, let mine go to someone else. :)

  57. nick

    May 18th, 2007 at 8:09 am

    to hack the gibson!

    (i work for microsoft now…?! nutz)

  58. TSW

    May 18th, 2007 at 8:18 am

    I’d use Popfly to create a mashup of mashup-generators, so that you can easily create your own Popfly competitor.

  59. David

    May 18th, 2007 at 8:19 am

    Persona attention economy management tool.

    If I could figure out what that is, exactly.

  60. Maxim

    May 18th, 2007 at 8:20 am

    I wanna send this invite to my friend (he is coolest web-programmer and he devise good idea)

  61. Masher Upper

    May 18th, 2007 at 8:24 am

    Hwo about a mashup that takes Windows XP and then adds stuff on top to make it look like Vista? Oh wait,…………….. damn!

  62. Michael Griffiths

    May 18th, 2007 at 8:25 am

    wow.

    Having watched the screencast, I am seriously impressed.

    A”wow” moment: intellisense!?!?! Office 2007 ribbon web designer?? Advanced visualizations?

    Being able to create a Twitter & VirtualEarth mashup in roughly 30 seconds is simply incredible.

  63. Andy

    May 18th, 2007 at 8:26 am

    I’d love to see a Yahoo! Pipes emulation written with this. That would really prove Popfly’s power over Pipes.

  64. webonics

    May 18th, 2007 at 8:30 am

    I’d like an invite to mash-up different news feeds and events (with possible mapping integration) for a local non-profit group.

  65. younews

    May 18th, 2007 at 8:31 am

    That’s wonderful! I already use Dapper very seriously and this could be used to make a mashup using Dapper output by parsing required news eeds and searching for relevant video on the net and displaying it along side the news! Waiting for your invite!!

  66. Brian Seward

    May 18th, 2007 at 8:33 am

    An invite would be amusing. I like storing delicious-sounding recipes I find (even though I only barely use them). Right now the easiest thing for me to do is usually save the page to Yahoo Bookmarks, but this is not a great solution because when I want to find something I only have title and thumbnail to go off of, each site has recipe format idiosyncrasies, and sometimes sites go away or move their content, gr. So what I’d like is a mashup that takes an RSS feed I generate (possibly Google Notebook?) that has in plain text recipes and/or links to recipe pages, and outputs rich, smart recipes, in a standard format and with links to buy weirder ingredients, different photos of the dish, ideally user comments from other sites, and provide a link to download a file I can insert directly into a desktop recipe application.

  67. drew

    May 18th, 2007 at 8:34 am

    top 10 mashups i will create with popFly:

    10) Widget which creates iPhone rumors directly from your eTrade account

    9) A WMD-Finder. (search found no results)

    8) IM chat with Paris in jail

    7) add WebCam + PayPal acct. to #8 - very lucrative

    6) TalentSpring + HotOrNot mashup — to unearth the bevy of Pussycat Doll programmers you know exists

    5) PopFlySwatter - so you can mash someone else’s mashup with ease

    4) Michael Jackson registered superstar-offender site. oh come on people - you know jacko’s innocent! But this might help: INSERT INTO SuperstarOffenders VALUES(’O.J.’, ‘Simpson’, ‘Los Angeles’, ‘CA’)

    3) Syphon all backlash responses from Apple & Java communities into a relational database (TRUNCATE all)

    2) Digg + JDate mashup - sorely needed

    1) Combine SIMS + YahooPersonals + FreshDirect so you can iMeet an iPerson at an iStarbucks and never leave your house

  68. TheCruncher

    May 18th, 2007 at 8:35 am

    TheCrunchers at PopFly: know of every invite offered at the earliest, get in line to plead for it and be the master cruncher :)

    bloody Pop crunching fly.

    Invite please !! pleaaaaaase.

  69. Give It To Me

    May 18th, 2007 at 8:36 am

    I like idea #51-2, except I’d do it with vinyards instead.

    And perhaps mash it up with ChowHound and, who knows, True.com… singles high on wine always make for amusing mash-ups (literally).

  70. Glyo

    May 18th, 2007 at 8:37 am

    I would build a photo widget that would allow my ‘tribe’ of friends to upload photos. Anyone of the tribe that has the widget on their desktops would see uploaded photos flash randomly from the uploaded pile. A quick way for us all to see events and happenings among our friends spread across the world.

  71. Chris Brainard

    May 18th, 2007 at 8:40 am

    Looks like another piece of garbage from Microsoft to me. For starters their whole silverlight is Windows specific with plugins for Mac. So if you want to do any development at all, you need to be on a windows machine. I love how you think mashups are going to change the web.

    For another thing Silverlight and this product are sooo alpha it isn’t even funny. I think I will stick with Apollo and Flex.

  72. zim

    May 18th, 2007 at 8:40 am

    Microsoft…i love and hate them at the same time…….i generally use the product if i like it, i will continue use otherwise, just throw it…now to do that, Bill gates is not gonna give me the license, since he is busy fighting with Steve Ballmer and asking him how to make Yahoo agree to the plan that he has been making to take the Google together….So it leaves only you guys to provide with invite….So do the honour ..i am not a regular visitor….just saw this on netvibes.com…so was curious..so now it will help u also to imrove ur reader base….

  73. Josh

    May 18th, 2007 at 8:42 am

    one word: “porn”

  74. drew

    May 18th, 2007 at 8:44 am

    INSERT INTO BacklashResponses VALUES(’Apple’, ‘post 71′)

  75. Dave Nielsen

    May 18th, 2007 at 8:48 am

    I’d like an invite. I’d like to create a business-oriented mashup of multiple StrikeIron APIs + Salesforce APIs, etc. for easy business card capture/data entry etc.

  76. MSTRBTR

    May 18th, 2007 at 8:48 am

    a calculator that determines your souls worth to MS.

  77. Url

    May 18th, 2007 at 8:51 am

    Microsoft using .ms That’s funny. I wonder if they are going to buy MONTSERRAT and rename to Microsoft.

  78. Sean South

    May 18th, 2007 at 8:55 am

    With the invite I’d write a mashup to allow me auto correct my email address on every comment I’ve ever posted on any site including this one.

  79. Christoph

    May 18th, 2007 at 8:55 am

    I would make a tool that looks up the Techcrunch feed for URLs that are referred to with keywords like “new”, “private beta” and “invites”, have Technorati give me a list of blogs that write about these URLs, let the tool parse through these blogs to find the word “invite”, send this text (http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=imbest) to those blog’s comment functions and once I will have used the service and found it great, I’d have my tool look up http://movers20.esnips.com/Tab.....reportId=1 for that tool and when it goes on top of the list, have my online trading platform buy shares of the company behind, find out via linkedin whether the founder is a girl, check zoominfo for her name, have the tool send her driving directions on google maps, wait for her and marry her. see the rest of the story…. http://www.businessweek.com/ap.....5OVPG0.htm

  80. edward

    May 18th, 2007 at 8:56 am

    With all these easy to use tools being made available, does it mean Web Developer jobs are in jeopardy?

    At least the average man on the street will hopefully need some bespoke work:)

  81. biddler

    May 18th, 2007 at 8:58 am

    Some Mac whining (don’t say you weren’t warned)….

    I can’t even play the frickin screencast because MS is using their own format for video. How lame is that? This is one example of why Adobe’s product are better. They work on all platforms, in all browsers. Do ya think MS will make certain features only available on Windows Vista? Of course! The issue here is that MS leverages all of their ‘innovations’ to sell Windows licenses. You can’t blame them for that, but it sure as hell makes Flex / Apollo look better from a cross-platform point of view.

  82. jc

    May 18th, 2007 at 8:59 am

    paul graham, was it, that said ms was dead? well, he seems to be the idiot on this one….good for ms, bad for paul graham.

  83. Paul Knegten

    May 18th, 2007 at 9:14 am

    I’d love to try out making some APIs for this with Dapper — just like with Pipes, this service’s coolness is only a function of the APIs you use with it. Since Dapper allows me to create any API, I’d be happy to come up with some pretty awesome mashup ideas from mapping content on a bunch of sites :) How many invites you got left?

    -Paul
    Dapper.net

  84. elvirs

    May 18th, 2007 at 9:15 am

    i want an invite see Ozzie’ latest invention

  85. Jerome Paradis

    May 18th, 2007 at 9:17 am

    I would very much like to try this out.
    An invite would be great!

  86. Danny

    May 18th, 2007 at 9:18 am

    >I can’t even play the frickin screencast because MS is using their own format for video

    You can play the video on a mac - you just have to download the player. Which you also have to to play quicktime on a pc. Or, for that matter, flash. Or for that matter - apollo.

  87. Craig Boyce

    May 18th, 2007 at 9:21 am

    Guys, If this is what it looks like, it’s exactly what I need to create a killer platform that I promise I will show first to TechCrunch!

  88. drew

    May 18th, 2007 at 9:24 am

    8)
    8 )

  89. jackstarla

    May 18th, 2007 at 9:26 am

    i would want to break it - thats whats alpha’s are for right?

  90. David Smit

    May 18th, 2007 at 9:36 am

    I am going to use Silverlight to build a facebook clone for pre-school children :-) Subliminal mind control messaging will be build in.

  91. Howard

    May 18th, 2007 at 9:40 am

    I would use Popfly to create a mesh up of Amazon and Flickr to let people enhance their shopping experience by seeing real products that Amazon sells in action in the real world.

  92. ULE

    May 18th, 2007 at 9:44 am

    I would love an invite. I think I would try to build that ultimate Breaking News-diversion I’ve been trying to build in Yahoo! pipes.

  93. ULE

    May 18th, 2007 at 9:46 am

    I would love an invite. I think I would build that ultimate Breaking News-diversion I’ve been trying to build in Yahoo! Pipes.

  94. Anshul

    May 18th, 2007 at 9:47 am

    All i can think of is something that could aggregate all of my contacts on flickr, twitter, facebook and any other social network and make a master list and update the list if any information has changed.

  95. vurdlak

    May 18th, 2007 at 9:59 am

    I’d just use it to create something simple, like the widget for optical illusions and stuff…

  96. Aaron Brethorst

    May 18th, 2007 at 10:01 am

    @80 Biddler: We didn’t realize until it was almost too late that Camtasia’s WMV/WMA exporting capabilities don’t seem to work on the Mac. By the time we did realize this, we couldn’t justify making any more changes to the site.

    The next time we rev the site, I’ll add a link to a mov file that has the same screencast. In the mean time, you can pick it up from my blog.

  97. Aaron Brethorst

    May 18th, 2007 at 10:03 am

    (and since I didn’t make it terribly obvious)

    I’m a member of the Popfly team.

    Cheers,
    Aaron

  98. Jess

    May 18th, 2007 at 10:03 am

    I will send you a hooker for an invite. OK, how about instead I make you a virtual girlfriend with Popfly. She will clean your computer with a virus scan.

  99. Jen

    May 18th, 2007 at 10:04 am

    I’d create a mash-up combining maps+social network+blogs(from our staff)+papers written by our staff…I’m at an international non-profit…tech is getting easier in all areas of the world and we are working hard to create more connections between staff.

  100. Victor

    May 18th, 2007 at 10:06 am

    Please give me an invite. Everything that Microsoft touches is golden these days and I really want to be the first one to try all the goodness that they are producing.

    People, server 2008 is out !!

  101. Justin

    May 18th, 2007 at 10:10 am

    I’d mash the web like it was a potato.
    A sweet, data-filled potato.

  102. Yodel

    May 18th, 2007 at 10:11 am

    I’m going to mash potatoes.

  103. desik

    May 18th, 2007 at 10:26 am

    I’d create a Poplfly mashup to showcase Google, Yahoo and other ‘user friendly’ mashup tools and call it ‘ Doing it the Hard Way ‘…

  104. jmj

    May 18th, 2007 at 10:42 am

    I’m currently working on pedagogical applications of technology; I would like to use the Flickr API to create mashups that help students explore the use of visuals and visual culture for communication.

  105. john g

    May 18th, 2007 at 10:51 am

    all your ideas are belong to Microsoft.

  106. Chess

    May 18th, 2007 at 11:16 am

    I don’t want your #@#@!@ invite.

    invite please.

  107. Tom

    May 18th, 2007 at 11:26 am

    could somebody please create a mashup of Zillow with information on local crime statistics and education ratings? I dont’ have the time to do it, but I’d really like to find such a service. Basically, some nice graphical way to cross-reference realestate-crime-education. Ta-da! Million dollar idea!

  108. David Meyer

    May 18th, 2007 at 11:32 am

    We real cool. We
    Left School. We

    Lurk late. We
    Strike straight. We

    Sing sin. We
    Thin gin. We

    Jazz June. We
    Die soon. We

    Popfly. We
    real high.

    -Gwendolyn Brooks (paraphrased)

  109. John Tokash

    May 18th, 2007 at 11:34 am

    I would love an invite.

    I’ve just started teaching my daughter about some of these services and how mashups work. I think she’d get a kick out of connecting the blocks, setting up prefs and getting something that works right away.

  110. DavidB

    May 18th, 2007 at 11:37 am

    I would love an invitation! I was working with Mashups before we called them that (just “situational applications” at the time). I’ve worked with John at Programmableweb.com, made mashup videos with ~30,000 views, and demo mashup making for a living. I would love to see what I could squeeze out of this tool.

    Right now I’m working on mashing a 3D simulation to show students (k-12) how they can reduce their carbon footprint on earth. This may be a good way to stress-test Popfly.

    Please.

  111. Dan O'Halloran

    May 18th, 2007 at 11:42 am

    I’d like to experiment with Popfly to create mashups of video/photos/news of SciFi shows such as ‘Battlestar Galactica’ and have it update every day with new content and build a community of fans around it.

    Thanks for the opportunity!

  112. JBoyd

    May 18th, 2007 at 11:43 am

    Violets are Blue
    Roses are Red
    Invite Me
    Or I Create Closet Shrine to Om Malik Instead

  113. Ben Strackany

    May 18th, 2007 at 11:47 am

    I would use my invite to help people tag, link, rate, comment on, and podcast old clifornia raisins commercials.

  114. Ben Strackany

    May 18th, 2007 at 11:48 am

    CALifornia raisins … dammit.

  115. Dan O'Halloran

    May 18th, 2007 at 11:49 am

    I’d also like to create a “Six Degrees of MMO” widget. Pulling from official player profiles on World of Warcraft, EQ2 and other games that host profiles, a player can see how many degrees they are connect to a friend and/or well known online celebirty. For example, if you are in the Reapers Guild on the Malfurion Server in World of Warcraft, you may be only three degrees away from Red Sox Pitcher Curt Schilling who is an avid EQ2 player (because someone in your guild has an alt in Eve who is in a guild with another player who has a character in Curt’s EQ2 guild.)

  116. mystiq_elephant

    May 18th, 2007 at 11:50 am

    I would create a mash up which would bring the content right after RSS feeds or would just open a popup and would haze the background. But in pop-up I would not display the cluttering ads. I would use ‘Print Preview” link on each site . As print preview button bring entire story on one page with no cluttering of Ads but unfortunately no website has standard API for print page link so little bit of programming would be needed and I am ready to do that. I am even trying it out for yahoo pipes. In Yahoo pipes at least I have mapped “perma-link” URLs of each story item to point to “Print Preview” link rather the simple link which opens a lot of pop-ups and too many ads. Also if story is big enough we have to click next next to read multi page story!

  117. iNewsDaily

    May 18th, 2007 at 11:58 am

    I promise to embed 10 widgets made from popFly for 30 days on http://iNewsDaily.com…

  118. Mark

    May 18th, 2007 at 12:00 pm

    Whats the deal with the .MS domain extension…? Doesn’t seem very professional.

  119. Dan O'Halloran

    May 18th, 2007 at 12:05 pm

    One more idea, I’d like to try to create a nucleus of video/photos/news/product around an upcoming convention. Conventions are used to socialize and make new contacts centered around a common interest. What if you could view photos of people attending (flickr, etc), fan made videos (YouTube, metacafe, etc), Official and unofficial news content and commentary (Dapper & googleAlerts) and all the related minutiae surrounding the event.

  120. Rich Weaver

    May 18th, 2007 at 12:27 pm

    I’ve got a static web page done in HTML with Frontpage. It’s a pain to update and I’d like to include some ways for my family (spread all over the US) to be able to leave little messages and for me to get RSS or comments quickly. I’d also like to be able to show my pictures on larger screens (like my PS3). I’d also like to see what the capabilities are of Silverlight and also how easy it is to put things together. I’d also like to get my son (who is thinking about working with technology) thinking about how he could put different pieces of technology together and create something cool for his friends to use and keep in touch over the summer.

  121. barco

    May 18th, 2007 at 12:50 pm

    Hi, Nik. I’d like an invite. Here’s what I’d do with Popfly:

    I’d first use OpenKapow to create a REST-based API on top of IMDB.com. The API would let me pass it the name of city and get back all the movies filmed there. Then I’d create a Popfly Mashup that displays in a map the location of all my friends in Spaces and what movies were filmed in there location. I love movies!

    -Barco

  122. Jay

    May 18th, 2007 at 1:06 pm

    Hi,

    I would love an account - just because I’m curious.

    Thanks,
    J

  123. Michael Hoffman

    May 18th, 2007 at 1:24 pm

    This is the power of user-generated content contests in action. 121 comments and counting, all for 10 potential beta invites.

  124. Graham

    May 18th, 2007 at 1:55 pm

    Thanks for the offer. For travellers, and I am one, a mashup of travel reviews, last minute offers and weather has an interest, additions to this foundation are plenty. The focus being the timely nature of the info and randomness of the choices.
    A long weekend in a sunny location would be great but is the weather forecast good? is there an un-beatable offer and what are people saying about the place?

    Thanks,
    GJW

  125. Mike Street

    May 18th, 2007 at 2:15 pm

    I will use this to mashup content from Associated Content’s best Content Producers into a real time publishing widget that CP’s can then place on their blogs.

    I’d also like to make a Starlet photo watcher mashup. This would pull photos from across several sites like flickr.com of our favorite young celbs. like Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.

  126. Allen Stern

    May 18th, 2007 at 2:17 pm

    I will mashup the forenamed mashup with a mashup to create the mashup which will be better than the previously named mashup that will compete with the mashup that is already a mashup to believe that a mashup might just be the thing that the mashup needs to be effective with the costs and benefits which a mashup has. Furthermore, the mashup won’t just mashup with the mashup, it will mashup WITH the mashup to create the mashup.

    Thank you.

  127. Beau Gunderson

    May 18th, 2007 at 2:41 pm

    I’m mostly interested in creating blocks to make it even easier for other users to create quality mashups without resorting to code.

    Blocks for combining and interleaving two or more RSS feeds, for instance, or two or more sources of photo information for display on Virtual Earth.

  128. Rami

    May 18th, 2007 at 3:03 pm

    Would love an invite.

  129. Andreas

    May 18th, 2007 at 3:08 pm

    I’ll build a Mologogo on steroids — enabling a generic mobile gateway to the ecosystem of Popfly. Browse through the functions on your cell phone and invoke them remotely, displaying the result on your phone. That’s going to be awesome!

  130. studebakerhawk

    May 18th, 2007 at 4:47 pm

    If I told you I`d have to kill you.

  131. Rich

    May 18th, 2007 at 4:53 pm

    hmm what now? All I want to do is make the earth spin backwards.

  132. mike calore

    May 18th, 2007 at 5:24 pm

    Hey chaps. This is Mike Calore from Wired News. I think I deserve an invite because I think you seriously dropped the ball on those screenshots. I could totally do a better job creating something sexy that’s compelling to look at on my blog given the chance. Twitter? Come on… it’s all Frazr these days!

  133. Billy Goatse

    May 18th, 2007 at 6:26 pm

    A search + map + advertising + office mash-up that only works 90% of the time and forces you to use Vista, IE, a Windows Live account AND gets updated every Tuesday.

    It will be a complete rip-off of something somebody else did in Open Source but I’ll threaten a law suit while sending emails about delays in Apple’s iPhone.

  134. Billy Goatse

    May 18th, 2007 at 6:34 pm

    I just made this name up and darn I think it’s funny. Has anyone else seen that used before? I claim it as mine.

    We-e-e-elll.. la-de-freakin’-da! ..is that Bill Shakespeare over there?

  135. DR. Nooooo.....

    May 18th, 2007 at 6:34 pm

    With PopFly and my uber-sized evil brain I will create the world’s largest mall that will encircle the earth in a geo-stationary orbit. Overpriced coffee will flow from every fountain and Wi-MAX will be free, forever addicting the population of the world who will never want to leave my “sky-mall”. I will then re-populate the earth with bees and whales. I will thus require not one but all ten invitations.

    Dr Noooo…..

  136. Billy Goatse

    May 18th, 2007 at 6:35 pm

    crap.

    http://www.google.com/search?h.....tnG=Search

  137. Drifter

    May 18th, 2007 at 6:43 pm

    How about a communication aggregator that consolidates email, im and social networks, contacts, presence… obviously, the backend infrastructure is not there yet, but it is kinda stupid to receive an email notification that you have a new email on myspace, isn’t it?

  138. Steve H

    May 18th, 2007 at 8:06 pm

    I’d change the name from Popfly to “Infield Fly Rule” or “Can of Corn.”

  139. Ilya Lichtenstein

    May 18th, 2007 at 9:01 pm

    I want an invite. If I had PopFly I wold use it to make something super-recursive. What happens when a mashup mashes up….its very self!