Microsoft opens up Popfly with public beta

Microsoft's Popfly, a mashup tool meant for every day users and built with Silverlight technology went into public beta today at the Web 2.0 summit. I covered Popfly when it first entered private beta and the new version looks to be a bit more stable and the user interface has been polished. Additionally, since Silverlight 1.0 has been released, it's running on released technology and not the beta bits from before.

I still really like the impetus behind Popfly. The interface is fun and while it takes a bit of time to get used to, once you have it figured out, dragging and dropping your way to a mashup is very useful. They've added a number of services over the period of the private beta so that now you should be able to create almost any kind of mashup you can think of. They have also included Facebook integration as well as the ability to turn your mashups into gadgets for the Vista Sidebar. It will be interesting to see if they keep this in beta for a while. With some of the features coming in Silverlight 1.1 they could do a lot more with it and release a new version around the same time 1.1 is slated to come out. But right now it's a fun tool and should help drive Silverlight adoption.