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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will use the annual Web 2.0 Summit here Oct. 18 to announce the public beta release of Popfly, a tool built on Microsoft Silverlight that lets people build and share mashups, gadgets, Web pages and applications.

Users can use Popfly to add games, slide shows, Halo 3 statistics or eBay auctions to their Facebook profile, blog or personal Web page; build a Web page for a club or organization; and leverage blocks from Popfly partners like Twitter, Facebook and Dapper to drive site awareness and traffic.

Microsoft, of Redmond, Wash., has also released some statistics about the adoption of Silverlight since the launch of version 1.0 a month ago. The number of partners participating in the Microsoft Silverlight Partner Initiative has grown to more than 50 organizations, and more than 40 customers have delivered Silverlight applications, the company said in a statement.

Silverlight 1.0 is now also available in simplified and traditional Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

Ballmer will talk at the morning keynote conversation with Web 2.0 Summit co-host John Battelle, where he is expected to also announce a new beta version of the Windows Live Photo Gallery, a free tool for managing and sharing photos for users of Windows Vista and Windows XP SP2.

The new beta includes the ability for users to publish their photos to Flickr directly from Windows Live Photo Gallery rather than just on Windows Live Spaces, as has been the case until now, a Microsoft spokesperson told eWEEK.

A couple of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 partners will also use the show to announce new offerings that expand the community-building capacities and social-computing opportunities in the workplace.