Today Microsoft is announcing that Popfly will be going into public beta.  So for those you that had requested to sign up for the beta, no worries!  You can automatically login without a hassle! (Pretty sweet, huh?) And for those of you that haven't signed up or don't know anything about it, just to go http://popfly.com and login with Passport.

Here's a brief description of what Popfly:

It's a Silverlight 1.0 application to create a really slick UI that allows you to use drag-and-drop tools to build some cool things.  It also includes support for Vista Sidebar and Live Gadgets.  For those dev geeks out there, you can use Visual Studio for editing Popfly pages - any page, any markup.  There are tons of example widgets that Popfly also includes in its gallery. 

What are some of the cool things you can do with Popfly?

1.  You can add some Popfly widget's to your web site, Facebook page or Windows Live Spaces page through a Popfly mashup.  Examples: game, content aggregators and streaming video.

2.  You can build your homepage inside of Popfly! This is great if you have a club, team, or social group that wants a great experience for folks that visit - Popfly will offer over 150 different themes, 10 different styles, and 30 unique color schemes.  Add things like photos, schedules from an RSS feed, video of games and meetings, Virtual Earth maps and directions, and more.  With NO CODE! ;-)

3.  Popfly also makes it easy to create and share slideshows using pictures from Flickr, Windows Live Spaces, Facebook, and more.

4. Popfly allows you to create mashups that shows what you are "digging" on Digg.com, maybe what you are buying or selling on eBay, the highlight video of your awesome kill in Halo 3 or your game score, what Facebook events you are attending, Twitter info, and more.

The possibilities are just about endless. And to make things even better and encourage you to explore all of those possibilities and share them with others, we are having a contest you can get involved with to show your wicked mashup skills - it's called appropriately enough - "Mashup and Win".  Eternal glory can be yours when you are declared the winner of the ultimate mashup challenge (and a great prize ain't too shabby either).  Make sure you keep your eye posted on the Popfly team blog since they will be posting some great content on using all the cool new features in Popfly over the coming days.

Mashup and Win Contest - How to Play

1. Sign up at popfly.com

2. Create a Popfly Mashup

3. Blog and link back to your Popfly Mashup

4. Tag blog for Technorati ()

5. Comment on Jeff Brand's blog post about Popfly and your mashup entry and link back to your blog

6. Have fun!

Rules, terms, and all that jazz: create a Popfly Mashup and submit it on SlickThought.Net as a comment to this blog post by October 31st for a chance to win a Zune 2.0 or an Xbox 360 Halo 3 Special Edition. Community leaders from Iowa and Nebraska – the fine folks that brought you Heartland Developers Conference – will review submissions and chose a winner by November 9th. The winning Mashup will be the most innovative, creative, and cool: the best Mashup will present content in the most unique way.



Both Jeff Brand and Denny Boynton have blogged about this release as well.  Check out Jeff's post and Denny's post!

Also, here's a list of other bloggers talking about it!

 

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