Microsoft is developing a tool that can allow non-programmers to customize and mash-up many different Web 2.0 programs and companies, say sources shut towards the enterprise. That instrument — now code-named "Springfield," according to one source — is similar in concept to the recently introduced Yahoo Pipes composite-mashup instrument introduced by Yahoo in February. Pipes provides a graphical-user-interace-based interface for building programs that aggregate Web feeds and other Web companies. 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,
Office 2010 Discount, just after Microsoft Chief Software Architec Ray Ozzie proclaimed that all Microsoft products, going forward,
Office 2007 Keygen, will have some kind of solutions and/or Web two.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 quite a lot of "Express" versions of its developer and database products, targeted specifically at non-professional programmers. But to date, provider officials have declined to discuss Tuscany details. The Microsoft "Tuscany" codename is dead, but the ideas behind the project are very much alive,
Office 2010 Standard, said Soma Somasegar, the Corporate Vice President in charge of Microsoft's developer division,
Office 2007 Standard, during an interview in New York on April 16. Microsoft is still about a month away from going public with details about the technology/strategy, Somasegar said. I pressed for more specifics about Tuscany, and asked how/if it was related to Boku, Microsoft's recently introduced experimental video-game programming environment for kids,
Office Standard, Somasegar said that Microsoft is looking to have "something for my 14-year-old daughter" that may enable her to create simple mash-ups and customize applications/sites like her MySpace page. He said Microsoft is considering how best to permit nonprofessionals to extend others' code in a simple way and create new mashed-up composite programs in the process. Not exactly the same as Yahoo's RSS-focused, very techical Pipes mash-up technology. But sounds like Microsoft is mulling some very similar concepts…