| Microsoft "mashup" site to become open-source development hub? |
Apr. 29, 2008
 A Microsoft-created website originally designed to create web "mashups" could become a hub for designing open-source Windows Mobile applications, if a proposal made this week catches on. Paul O'Brien, founder of the Windows Mobile community MoDaCo, has suggested using Microsoft's "Popfly" site to share code.
Popfly, still officially in beta but open for free to anyone with a Microsoft Windows Live ID, was designed for non-professional programmers and hobbyists to build "mashups," web pages that combine data sources from different websites using pre-built "blocks." Dozens of blocks are available, offering content from Flickr, Windows Live Spaces, Virtual Earth, and various news services.
Popfly includes Web Creator, a tool that allows creating and customizing web pages, which are uploaded to each user's 25MB "Popfly Space" on a Microsoft server. Once there, mashups can be downloaded as gadgets for the Windows Sidebar included with Windows Vista, or embedded into Windows Live Spaces.
The Popfly Explorer plugin for Visual Studio
(Click to enlarge)
Additionally, however, Popfly offers the Popfly Explorer plug-in (seen above) for Visual Studio 2005 or 2008. Once installed, this allows Popfly mashups and blocks to be downloaded and modified from within Visual Studio. It is also designed to let users "share Visual Studio solutions with friends and access Visual Studio solutions from anywhere," says Microsoft.
"This led me to think about a concept I've been pondering and talking about for a while: community development," O'Brien wrote in a MoDaCo forum. Citing DupeDeDupe, a simple application he wrote to remove duplicate contacts from a Windows Mobile device, he added, "the idea is that projects such as DupeDeDupe could be open-source and completely viewable by the community at large."
A shared-source program entered into Popfly Explorer
"With the Popfly Explorer, I can open up DupeDeDupe for example, and select to share it. Then, my Popfly friends can just download the source, etc. as I update it," he added.
To join the proposed community, users should join Popfly, download the Popfly Explorer and install it into a copy of Visual Studio, then add "paulatmodaco" as a friend. Though available as a free download, Microsoft's Visual Studio Express will not work because it does not support mobile development, O'Brien warns. However, Visual Studio 2008 is available in a 90-day trial edition from the Microsoft website, here.
To read more about O'Brien's proposal, including user comments, see the MoDaCo website, here. To find out more about Popfly, go here.
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