14 DAY TRIAL // In a little over a month Microsoft plans to kill a mash-up tool that was introduced in 2007. When it unveiled Popfly, the Redmond company aimed to provide a project that would essentially democratize the development of mash-ups. Now the software giant is warning those who jumped aboard and used Popfly to build content that the tool will be shut down come August 24th, 2009. The reasons for killing Popfly are directly related to the strategy designed to help the company deal with the worldwide economic downturn.
“Thanks for stopping by. Unfortunately, on August 24th, 2009, the Popfly service will be discontinued, all resources will be taken down, and access to your Popfly account, including games and mashups, will cease,” reads a notice posted on the Popfly home page.
The tool never evolved past the Beta stage since it was initially introduced a couple of years ago, and now it won't get a chance to. Popfly was aimed at a non-professional and hobbyist audience with a passion for development. Users could build web pages, games, and mash-ups without knowing or writing a single line of code. With the discontinuation of Popfly next month, Microsoft will also cut access to all associated content, sites, references, and resources, revealed John Montgomery, from the Popfly Team.
On August 24 “your access to your Popfly account, including any games and mashups that you have created, will be discontinued. However, Microsoft is still very much dedicated to helping you express your creativity and pursuing a path to software development and offers multiple products to help along the way. If you’re interested in refining your skills in Web applications, please visit Microsoft Web Platform Installer. For those interested in programming on the Xbox, then please visit Microsoft XNA or Microsoft Kodu. And for those who are interested in Windows programming, please visit Microsoft Express,” he stated.
Members of the Popfly community can of course save their creations. All the need to do is add a .ZIP archive to the end of the URL for a specific project to grab a package of whatever content was put together: http://www.popfly.com/users/UserName/ProjectName.zip. Still, projects will not run locally, so they qualify for memorabilia and nothing more.