Microsoft Popfly

You’ve heard of Yahoo Pipes right? A little online application that lets you build mash-ups of various components on websites and build your own little version of a widget.

Microsoft has now released their own version of the ability to develop your own mash-ups and they’ve called it Microsoft Popfly, now in alpha. It was originally codenamed “Springfield”.

According to Mary Jo Foley, the biggest difference between the two, and it’s a huge one, is that Microsoft Pipes seems to be much easier to use.

Popfly, Microsoft’s newest Web mash-up development tool that the company released in alpha form on May 18, isn’t really like Yahoo Pipes. It’s more like Yahoo Pipes for mere mortals.

Sounds good to me. Now, as with anything else, I’ve just got to find the time and opportunity to play around with it myself. Looks like it could really come in handy in a couple of different areas with a variety of my website clients. As well as the ability to integrate some nice new features into some client applications I’m working on now.