In No Particular Order

So, Microsoft now has a widget/feed/mashupificator. Interesting.

I like the picture of the ducks.

I don’t really understand what it does – seems like hosted “feeds+configurable_widgets”, but then I’m not as yet one of the chosen Alphites on the test

In the FAQs though there’s a neat bit of humour (or “you-more” as our American friends say): when ‘asked’ “Why did you call it Popfly?” the answer was:

Well, left to our own devices we would have called it “Microsoft Visual Mashup Creator Express, May 2007 Community Tech Preview Internet Edition,” but instead we asked some folks for help and they suggested some cool names and we all liked Popfly.

No doubt this is staged, but it raised a smile with me – and smiles plus coloured ducks is as good a start to any new business as I can think of…

This is an interesting and useful site:

Our mission is to provide easy access to high quality open source alternatives to well-known commercial products.

Early days to tell how good it is as yet, but I’ve already had some success looking for Visio alternatives and MS Project viewers. Here’s wishing them every success!