| When I heard that Microsoft was developing a mashup creation tool, I knew two things: one, that I wanted to get access to it as soon as possible, and two, that I wanted to write a book about it.
Mashups are all the rage. The explosion of public APIs by the who’s who in the Web 2.0 world (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and so on) has caused a revolution in the way software is developed—mashups are the precursor to the way software will be developed in the future.
Software as a service has long been on the horizon, and Web Services, in its many technological forms, is the enabler of cross-platform, cross-service integration that is at the heart of mashups.
But even as mashups emerged, the tools used to create them were familiar only to Websavvy programmers and enthusiasts. For the larger, nontechnical audience, the tools were unapproachable and difficult to use.
Then Microsoft introduced Popfly—a tool for the nonprogrammer enthusiast who wants to quickly create new software.
Who This Book Is For
This book is for the nonprogrammer or enthusiast who wants to create new software fast. The tool enables users to take advantage of the heavy lifting already done by other programmers and the functionality supplied by public APIs in the form of Web Services from service providers like Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, and more. |