Microsoft to Offer Beta Release of Popfly

SAN FRANCISCO—Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will use the annual Web 2.0 Summit here Oct. 18 to announce the public beta release of Popfly, a tool built on Microsoft Silverlight that lets people build and share mashups, gadgets, Web pages and applications.

Users can use Popfly to add games, slide shows, Halo 3 statistics or eBay auctions to their Facebook profile, blog or personal Web page; build a Web page for a club or organization; and leverage blocks from Popfly partners like Twitter, Facebook and Dapper to drive site awareness and traffic.

Microsoft, of Redmond, Wash., has also released some statistics about the adoption of Silverlight since the launch of version 1.0 a month ago. The number of partners participating in the Microsoft Silverlight Partner Initiative has grown to more than 50 organizations, and more than 40 customers have delivered Silverlight applications, the company said in a statement.

Silverlight 1.0 is now also available in simplified and traditional Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

Ballmer will talk at the morning keynote conversation with Web 2.0 Summit co-host John Battelle, where he is expected to also announce a new beta version of the Windows Live Photo Gallery, a free tool for managing and sharing photos for users of Windows Vista and Windows XP SP2.

Click here to read more about the legend of Popfly.

The new beta includes the ability for users to publish their photos to Flickr directly from Windows Live Photo Gallery rather than just on Windows Live Spaces, as has been the case until now, a Microsoft spokesperson told eWEEK.

A couple of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 partners will also use the show to announce new offerings that expand the community-building capacities and social-computing opportunities in the workplace.

Atlassian Software Systems, a wiki provider, has a new set of plug-ins, which are available immediately, to enable bidirectional information flow between both collaboration platforms.

NewsGator Technologies, an RSS company, will announce the general availability of NewsGator Social Sites, a collection of site templates, profiles, Web parts and middleware that will enhance the social computing capabilities for SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.

Ballmer is also expected to address the industry opportunity for business transformation on the Web.

“Microsoft is committed to supporting new business models on the Internet, and has an exciting—and growing—portfolio of Web technologies that is helping to catalyze the growth of Web innovation,” Ballmer said in a statement released before his keynote talk. “This is an incredible time for developers, designers, advertisers, marketers and consumers to plug into and take advantage of the opportunities to experience and grow businesses on the Web.”

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