Microsoft has released a service called Popfly, a free online web service in Alpha stage that allows you to build and share mashups, gadgets (including for Windows Vista), Web pages, and applications.

Popfly consists of two parts:

1) Popfly Creator: Set of online visual tools for building Web pages and mashups. Popfly Creator tools are designed to enable you to create Web experiences without being a programmer. Connecting services on the Web is as easy as drawing a line between two blocks. Popfly creator also enables you to create static Web pages and even insert custom mashups directly into your static page.

2) Popfly Space: An online community of creators where you can host, share, rate, comment and even remix creations from other Popfly users. Popfly Space provides an easy way to upload and share Visual Studio Express projects to the world. For JavaScript/CSS/HTML developers, it provides a free “playground” to build and share fun Web experiences. It’s the “YouTube for applications” where you can discover, rate, comment, and remix everything.

Popfly Applications: By clicking Share on your Projects page, your Popfly application will be hosted on Popfly and made available for anyone to use. You can also click “Embed” where you’ll see a set of codes you can use to embed your application on any site that supports the html iframe tag as well as being able to publish to any MetaWeblog API site including Windows Live Spaces, Wordpress and Typepad.

Key Features of the various components include:

Mashup Creator: Blocks, Design Surface, Integrated Tutorials and Fully Customizable HTML
Web Page Creator: Visually Design Your Page, Custom Themes, Styles, and Colors and Embed Mashups
PopFly Space: Connect with creators of Projects, Rate, Remix and Embed Everywhere (save your project as a Windows Sidebar Gadget ) and Share Visual Studio Express Projects

Visit PopFly to signup now