Thursday, 19 April 2007
What is Microsoft planning to launch?
« Beagle ++ The semantic extension to the Beagle search tool | Main | Pipelines: Plumbing for the next web from Xtech 2007 »Thanks to Tom Morris, I'm left wondering what on earth Microsoft are working on. Hopefully it will be desktop pipes.
Microsoft is developing a tool that will allow non-programmers to customize and mash-up various Web 2.0 applications and services, say sources close to the company.
That tool — now code-named "Springfield," according to one source — is similar in concept to the recently introduced Yahoo Pipes composite-mashup tool introduced by Yahoo in February. Pipes provides a graphical-user-interace-based interface for building applications that aggregate Web feeds and other Web services.
While I can't confirm this for a fact, I have strong suspicions that "Springfield" is the new codename for the technology formerly known as Microsoft "Tuscany."
The Microsoft Tuscany codename first surfaced over a year ago, just after Microsoft Chief Software Architec Ray Ozzie proclaimed that all Microsoft products, going forward, will have some kind of services and/or Web 2.0-centric component. Tuscany was known to somehow be connected with Microsoft's push to enlist more nonprofessional programmers and hobbyists in its developer ranks. Microsoft subsequently released a number of "Express" versions of its developer and database products, targeted specifically at non-professional programmers. But to date, company officials have declined to discuss Tuscany details.
