Microsoft Popfly goes beta

October 18, 2007 at 10:02 am · Filed under RIA, Web Applications, Programming

Microsoft has moved Popfly from Alpha to Beta. What’s Popfly? It is a web-based, Silverlight environment which allows coders and non-coders alike to create and share web mash-ups (think along the lines of Yahoo Pipes), gadgets, applications and web pages.

From Microsoft’s press release:

Popfly goes public. Microsoft today announced the public beta release of Popfly, a tool built on Microsoft Silverlight, which provides a fun and easy way for anyone to build and share “mashups,” gadgets, Web pages and applications. Popfly provides anyone — even those with no programming experience — with a simple way to make creations without code and share them on social networks such as Windows Live Spaces and Facebook. Popfly enables users to do the following:

• Add some pizazz to their Facebook profile, blog or personal Web page by adding games, slide shows, “Halo® 3” stats or eBay auctions.
• Build a Web page for a club or organization, such as a soccer team page that would include a schedule, photos and videos from past games, directions to upcoming matches, and more.
• Leverage blocks from Popfly partners, such as Twitter, Facebook and Dapper, to drive site awareness and traffic.

Initially saw this mentioned in Erick Schonfield’s post on TechCrunch.

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How I got a Yahoo Mash invite in 5 minutes

September 17, 2007 at 11:01 pm · Filed under Web Applications, Usability, Web 2.0, Alpha, Social Networking, Beta, User Experience

I like participating in betas for web sites and web-based applications. Trouble is, I’m just a regular guy. And, historically hunting for invites has yielded a relatively poor return on my time investment. Thankfully, a new site has made it easier for us regular guys to participate. It’s aptly called InviteShare. Here’s how it works:

How Beta Invites are Distributed
When a startup with a killer moves into a limited beta phase, they delve out a small number of invitations to friends or people who have requested participation online. Each of the people receiving the invitation are granted the ability to invite a few more people. And so on… And so on…

Enter InviteShare
InviteShare’s has formalized (and in essence taken control of) the whole process by creating an exchange for beta invitations. Since the distribution of invites usually proliferates exponentially, if a user who receives an invite simply returns the favor to other InviteShare members, the ball keeps rolling.

My first experience with InviteShare was great. After creating my account I logged in, and, after a bit of fumbling around with the site I arrived at the Streamy.com invite page and gave my last Streamy invite to the next person waiting in the queue. Then, I searched on Mash and requested an invite. Less than 5 minutes later I had an invite in my Inbox from another InviteShare member named Ian. Genius.

Any negatives? One glaring one: This ain’t no 37signals app. InviteShare’s user experience needs an intervention. Applying some sound usability principles would go a long way for InviteShare.

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Silverlight “Zero Gravity” game featured on Microsoft’s Silverlight.net web site

June 27, 2007 at 8:55 am · Filed under Alpha, Visual Design, Games

Our little experimental Silverlight Alpha (1.1) game is being featured on Microsoft’s Silverlight.net web site! Gameplays are rolling in and the team is already getting fun (and constructive) feedback on the game.

It seems as though Level 20 is the one that everyone gets stumped on. Only a select handful have made it past it! Give it a shot!

UPDATE: Well, after 6 days and a lot of attention, and a lot of gameplay, 88 dedicated players have completed Zero Gravity (made it all the way to the last level)! It’s a testament to the toughness of the puzzle game as thousands of people have taken on the challenge!

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Silverlight game development - Zero Gravity

June 27, 2007 at 7:57 am · Filed under Alpha, Programming, Beta, Social Networking, Games, Visual Design, User Experience

To put the Microsoft Silverlight Alpha 1.1 plug-in through its paces, a team here at Terralever has worked up a game called Zero Gravity. You can learn a little about the game here:

Zero Gravity
The Terralever Sandbox

I’m leaning towards getting some sleep, and noticed Tim Heuer put together a great post about the Silverlight Game, so I’m going to point you in that direction to hear about our project from his perspective.

Enjoy the game! If you’re a developer, look forward to our team providing code snippets at our sandbox page. Questions? Get to know Lt. Bennett on Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace. Oh, and if you like the game, give us a Digg!

UDPATE: Here’s a picture of local (Regional… National… International…) Microsoft hero Tim Heuer demoing Zero Gravity at The Arizona .NET User Group Über Meeting in Phoenix, Arizona on the 27th of June. Sorry for the poor quality photo…

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Popfly invite

May 26, 2007 at 9:41 am · Filed under Programming, Alpha

In the recent Joost Private Beta invite drought, I opened the floodgates and was handing them out like candy…

Can anyone return the favor with a Popfly Alpha invite? I’d love to get my hands on one. If you have one to give, please send it to my sdmca[at]hotmail[dot]com email address!

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