'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). 

Popfly has three key features. The mentioned mashup creator, a web page creator and last but not least Popfly Space.
Popfly Space is an online community where the mashup creators can meet and show their creations to each other. 

The technology behind Popfly is Silverlight (formerly known as WPF/E). Silverlight is sometimes seen as the Flash "killer" app. Is it going to be a killer? I'm not sure but a competitor? Absolutely. Silverlight sure has the potential to become widely spread (via Microsoft update?). The only question is if the designer community is going to pick it up.
For the alpha-geek developers it has potential enough. CLR and DLR cross browser and cross platform. The choice of using your favorite programming language independent of the browser or platform. The first demos were already shown on the MIX 07 conference using C# in a browser on Mac OSX.

I watched the Popfly screencast and signed up but unfortunately there is a waiting list. Popfly is still an alpha release. Silverlight 1.0 is beta and Silverlight 1.1 (with the cross platform CLR and DLR) is still in alpha. 

The Silverlight technology is still in a very early state of acceptance but with tools like the Popfly mashup creator it shouldn't be a problem to convince a broader audience in using the new Silverlight technology.