Today Microsoft announced another piece of amazing technology. After an impressive MIX event, you'd think that Microsoft had shared all their Web 2.0 ideas. Oh boy was I wrong. Popfly is a new product that enables end users to visually create mashups, web pages and gadgets. It's built in Silverlight, and the UI looks amazing. You create a new Popfly mashup by dragging and dropping "blocks" onto a design surface, setting a few properties on the blocks and connecting them together. A block is an encapsulated piece of code wrapping some kind of online service, or some presentation logic.

The concept is similar to Yahoo Pipes, but Microsoft have pushed it even further. I've previously blogged about Yahoo pipes, and my impression is that it's fairly good at combining data, but it's presentation layer is really limited. You basically get some kind of XML output, but you need to build a sleek presentation layer your self. In Popfly you have several really good looking UI components you can connect to your Web 2.0 data sources. Much of the UI pices is Silverlight, but you can also customize the UI yourself by editing the HTML output. Oh, did I mention Popfly got an HTML/JavaScript editor, written in Silverlight, with intellisense? Amazing!

Another key component of Popfly is the community aspect. You can create, store, share and distribute your Popfly mashups easily, in the same way we're used to in the Live Gallery. Once you've found a mashup you like you can choose to embed it onto your page, or even download it as a Sidebar Gadget!

At the moment the Popfly is in a really closed Alpha. I've requested an invitation, and is trying to pull a few RD strings to get access. I can't wait to get a chance to play with this myself. Oh, btw, turns out Andy Sterland is working as a program manager on Popfly. I got a chance to meet Andy in the Imagine Cup world finals last summer. He was part of the UK team in India.

While waiting for Popfly access, you MUST check out this amazing 15min video tutorial covering all major aspects of Popfly.

Some Popfly links:

• Official site
• Article in TechCrunch
• Channel9 video with the team
• Johhn Montgomery's list of Popfly links