't IsGoud

Last Friday Microsoft announced a new mashup tool called Popfly. With this tool it's possible to create web mashups by dragging and clicking. This online tool is simply amazing (see the screencast). For programmers it's almost scary how easy mashup applications are being created. This way even my mother-in-law can build a mashup (just kidding mom). 

I mentioned in my previous post "Google Office?" that Google was working on a webbased Office suite. Well they just made the next step ...

At Lifehacker I came across this prototype of a new virtual desktop called BumpTop. It's a prototype, it's new but it looks so familiar and it "feels" natural. It brings piling and all of it's related features to your computer desktop.

Just a couple of months ago Google bought Writely, an online collaborative word processor. And now Google Labs is working on Google Spreadsheet!

Google Spreadsheet is still in a "Limited Test" state. Meaning you have to sign up and hope you are one of the happy few to try it out.
Already available is a small tour that describes the new features:

I first heard the word mashup at the MIX06 conference. Mashup (web application hybrid) as trend was mentioned at several sessions. These mashups use and combine webservices to create new applications. The programmableweb has a nice overview of some of these combinations in a matrix.
According to Wikipedia a mashup is also a musical genre. This genre uses parts of other songs to create new songs.

So basically combining stuff is not really new and if you look around you see it happening over and over again. Another good sample -and a very succesfull one- is the Senseo created by Philips and Douwe Egberts. But Nike and Apple take it to the next level.