Webware

Mozilla Labs on Thursday unveiled a new open-source project called Bespin, a Web-based programming environment its developers hope will combine the speed and power of desktop-based development with the collaborative benefits of cloud computing.

Bespin 0.1 is only an "initial prototype framework that includes support for basic editing features," according to the site, but Mozilla has high hopes for the project. "We're particularly excited by the prospect of empowering Web developers to hack on the editor itself and make it their own," said Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer in Mozilla's Bespin announcement.

Microsoft's Popfly team is rushing to finish a major addition to its mash up maker so it can do demonstrations at the Maker Faire in San Mateo, Calif., tomorrow. I got a quick demo earlier this week and I hope the product is ready in time, because it's a great new service, and just perfect for the audience the Maker Faire draws.

The new feature: an environment for building casual games (think Solitaire, not Half-Life), called Game Creator There are several templates with generic titles to start from (personal favorite: "Badly built wall") or users can create their own games from scratch using a scripting system and a built-in, and entertaining, library of graphics and sounds.

Indeed, that is a badly-built wall.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Popfly Game Creator lets you assign behaviors to your game's "actors." (Click image to enlarge.)

(Credit: Microsoft)

In the demo I saw, a Space Invaders-like game was built in just a few minutes. I'm always skeptical when people with intimate knowledge of a development environment show how easy it is to build an application with it; I've always found that really learning a development system, even one geared for programmer newbies such as this, takes a bit of dedication. In other words, it's never as easy as it looks. However, even though I was not able to try the product before writing this, Popfly Game Creator does indeed appear to be an easy and fun environment to build games in.

The system has a physics engine of some sophistication. It can tell when items collide (a key behavior in games), and it models gravity, but I was told that a Pong-type game required hand-coded extensions to calculate bounce angles.

The runtime debugger shows your actors, behaviors, and actions. (Click image to enlarge.)

(Credit: Microsoft)

Popfly games can be run on the Popfly site, or embedded on any Web page or Facebook profile. The games use the Silverlight runtime, which is a straightforward install if it's not already on your system (Yes, there is a Mac version).

While Popfly Game Creator is part of the Popfly product, integration into the mash up maker environment is not complete, so you can't build today, say, a shoot-em-up that lets you blast incoming Twitter messages out of the sky. Too bad.

Popfly's Principal Group Program Manager, John Montgomery (disclosure: we used to work together) says that, "Games is what sucks people into coding." I can relate to that. When I was a child, I taught myself BASIC so I could write games. Popfly Game Creator is the kind of system I'd love to put my own son in front of, when he's old enough, to show him how much fun it is to program.

If you read that chick-lit classic Bergdorf Blondes (I'm proud to admit that I did), you'll probably recall the scene in which the shopaholic female protagonists hold a military-style planning session in advance of the legendary Chanel sample sale--a chance for them to snag the high-end designer goods at staggering discounts, the only caveat being that hundreds of other viciously competitive Manhattan women were also hoping to get their hands on the same stuff.

It was only a matter of time before that sort of upper-crust cutthroat shopping hit the Web.

Enter Ideeli (pronounced "ideally"), which debuted Monday after several months of soft-launch. Described as a "red-rope online shopping community," Ideeli is an invite-only site that hosts high-speed sales of luxury goods (so far, just accessories) at 50 to 90 percent discounts and keeps its members in the loop through e-mail and mobile alerts to let them know when a sale has started.

Quantities are limited and can sell out within minutes--if this sounds familiar, it's because it's a model pioneered by rapid-fire sale sites like Woot.com, which has built up an enviable cult following, and the girlier Delight.com.

But as the luxury market warms up to the Web, the Woot model is being applied to sites that are more Sex and the City than Star Trek. Following in the vein of "velvet rope" social networks like ASmallWorld (for the jet set) and Metrofunk (for the club set), Ideeli and similar sites like Gilt Groupe (which hosts high-end online sample sales), are invite-only.

Ideeli has some twists thrown in the mix, too. The site offers a paid "first row" membership ($7.99 per month) that enables mobile alerts and also allows for an hour of early access to sales.

It's obviously not for everyone. Even considering the discounted prices, these are still luxury goods, and hence typically cost a few hundred dollars at the minimum. Some pragmatic shopaholics aren't willing to plunk down that kind of cash without seeing the item in person, or with that kind of impulse-buying required. But some money types are banking on success: Ideeli announced Monday that it has secured $3.8 million in capital from Kodiak Ventures and a handful of angel investors.

Snobbish? Totally. But so are Apple fanboys, for the record. We also happen to have Ideeli invites available for readers: go to ideeli.com and use "cnet" as your invitation code.