Eric Griffin's Blog : Popfly

Popfly Goes Public Beta!

ebgriffin1968 — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 18:41:54 GMT

Steve Ballmer will announce the Popfly Public open beta today at the Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco.

That's right. It's here. Popfly is now opened up to the masses.

Go sign up now and create your first Mashup in 30 seconds.

I have another announcement coming shortly. Stay tuned.

Popfly Invitation Giveaway!!

ebgriffin1968 — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 17:10:08 GMT

Ok. You've heard me talk about Popfly, the Mashup creation tool that is not available to the public yet. I want to relieve some frustration for two lucky people.

I've got two invitations to give away for Popfly. All you have to do is comment on this post with your e-mail and I will choose two of them by Monday August 20th.

There is a small catch: I want to hear what you would like to try and create with Popfly.

The best ideas win!

Popfly: Nearing Public Beta

ebgriffin1968 — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 22:03:00 GMT

It's been a while since I have blogged on Popfly, the Mashup creation tool from us. It's not because I don't want to, but it is in private beta. So I don't want to frustrate people by talking about something they have no access to.

But the public beta is approaching so stay tuned. I have a surprise for you.

-Eric

What is Wrong with My Popfly Mashup?

ebgriffin1968 — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 05:30:00 GMT

So here is a Mashup I've created in Popfly. Nothing special. It takes the feed from my site using the RSS Block and connects to the basic NewsReader Block. It took a total of 45 seconds to create. I'm not complaining about the way it looks or how it retrieves my rss feed and diplays raw HTML here and there. Its in alpha after all and I have no interest in creating a news reader (I'll leave that to another block creator).

But I am interested in the fact that I can't mix more that one feed into the NewsReader Block. (i.e. I can't connect more that one RSS Block to the NewsReader Block.)What if I I want my readers (you), to see a Mashup that displays all the news I read from various sources in one place. Can't do that right now. And there is no functionality I can find in a Block in Popfly. I don't see a Block that can load multiple feeds and sent it to the News Reader Block

So I guess I'm going to have to make a Block that does that. And that will be the Block I will create as an example of how to develop Popfly Blocks. I will also dig more into the architecture of Popfly as I promised in Part II.

Stay Tuned.

Popfly Block SDK First Look - Part I

ebgriffin1968 — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 20:50:15 GMT

In my first post about Popfly, I commented that the first thing I wanted to do was play around with the extensibility mechanism that is at the core of Popfly called Blocks.

After downloading the SDK (sorry, its still in restricted to Alpha testers) but you can get on the waiting list if you have a Windows Live ID here.

Over the next week or so I plan to dive into an example Block I have thought up. But right now I want to give you a broad overview of Alpha Popfly Block Development on a PC.

DISCLAIMER - this stuff will likeley change in the future. After all its still in Alpha (as defined by the Popfly Team).

After downloading the SDK and skimming through the documentation I set up a Visual Studio project to host my Block development. Building Blocks (no pun intended) is done entirely in pure Javascript AJAXian goodness. No managed code is used to create Blocks.

Popfly is all Javascript so there is no .NET assemblies in the References or Properties Folders.

The SDK uses the "Blocks" folder to load Blocks you want to test. RSSCombine.js is my Block that I will talk to you about it in my next posts.

The "Samples" folder contains the other demo Blocks. Drag them up to the "Blocks" folder to test one of them out. The XML files are the block description files (more on those in future posts)

The "Support" folder has all the Popfly runtime Javascript files. Notice that included in the support files is the Microsoft Ajax Library.

The "Default.aspx" is the host for Popfly blocks and serves as a test harness. I set this page as the "start-up" page in visual studio.

That's how I set up for developing locally. In the second part of this first look, I'll show you Popfly development in the Popfly site.

Stay tuned - Part II up next

Popfly extensibility with Blocks...

ebgriffin1968 — Thu, 31 May 2007 16:50:00 GMT

With the announcement of Popfly, I could wait to start playing with it. Popfly is a mashup creation too for anyone. You don't have to bee a hard core developer to integrate Virtual Earth with Flickr.

It didn't talk long for me to want to start coding. So I downloaded the SDK. (You can only get the SDK if you have access)

You can get on the waiting list by having a Windows Live ID. (Fortunately, as an employee, to get early access to Popfly) I know, I know, but it is worth the wait. It will be opening up to Beta before you know it. It is first come first serve so get in line!

Blocks are the way Popfly allows creators to make mashups. Each block is connected to each other. Some blocks provide content while other blocks display content. For example the Flickr block allows you to search and retrieve pictures from you Flickr account and display the images using the PhotoSphere block.

On the Popfly design surface you drag and drop the blocks you want to use and then connect the dots (no really, they are dots!)

Popfly uses Silverlight as a development and delivery platform, so this goes hand in hand with my earlier post about Silverlight.

Stay Tuned, I will be starting my first Popfly Block shortly and I will let you know how to do it and what I developed.