Archive for September, 2007

Visual Bookshelf: share your reading in facebook and beyond

September 29th, 2007

HungryMachine is a web development group specialized in Ruby on Rails and they are very into facebook and decided to develop and release a  widget, with the particularity that the widget debuted only on Facebook. making it a widget to facebook only widget, something that goes completely the other way around to what you usually are used to. because the commong ground is to release for the web and then release a facebook version, but they seem so comfortable with facebook and i guess this would be the way to make a point across.

The widget in question allows you to show what you are reading, what you have already read by sectioning a bookshelf to share with others, that way your facebook contacts can check it out.

as with al things Facebook, the word widget should come with the word module along it.

09_29_2007 02_46 p.m.

It is a good widget but not a usal one and the particularity of being facebook exclusive, makes it worth of checking it out and is interesting how facebook has affected the widgetosphere (yeah, i said it) too.

Visual Bookshelf Widget (blog entry)

Visual Bookshelf Widget App (facebook)

via All facebook

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Widget History in brief

September 29th, 2007

Niall Kennedy from widgets live and the upcoming widget summit fame has done a very interesting and informative post about widgets history in a loose stringed but very well researched time table that starts in 1984 up to 2007.

My only observation is that even if 2007 is not finished yet i would have added Silverlight, Flex and AIR widgets already..but i guess if it were point by point the timetable would have hundreds points of reference and 2007 would certainly be the busiest year so far.

A must read for everyone.

09_29_2007 01_48 p.m.

A brief widget history

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YouTube: Adsense for Embeddables

September 29th, 2007

 

Home

Darren Rowse got the scoop that Adsense is also coming up for YouTube Embeddables, showing what i was talking about Google Diversificating its Advertising as a way to mantain supremacy in the web, because aftel all it really don´t matter if everyone uses your services if you are not producing money in order to assure that you can grow without interruptions.

This YouTube initiative it is targeted for Publishers (Original Content Directors) with certain YouTube cred levels (high ones) so don´t expect it to be allowed for everyone right now.

In the end this also mark another important landmark for not only user generated content, but for widgets too by showing how hard is the push from the mainstream companies to enforce monetization.

I can safely say that the days of free and naive playing with widgets is over because now if you like a video and you would like to share it, if you spread it, you will be spreading wealth to others and in very specific cases also to yourself. but for those not wanting to be in that game, their only option will be to download and reupload the videos into their own players when allowed.

Times change, and they change fast.

Adsense Preview 1

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The CW network awash in widgets

September 28th, 2007

The CW has widgetized its fall lineup!

cwwidgets.png

Just a bit more proof that widgets are becoming a very important marketing tool. The CW network has decided to leverage the popularity of widgets in order to promote new shows for the fall season. They have also released a number of widgets featuring some already popular prime time shows.

Gossip Girl, Reaper, Life is Wild, Girlfriends, Aliens in America, Online Nation and The Game are all new shows that are featured in these colorful, attractive and interactive widgets. Each widget features a preview video, link to a show themed wallpaper and a ‘Viral’ link so your readers can easily grab their own copy from yours.

The ‘Featured’ widget is the Gossip Girls widget. It features some preview videos and a rather different feature. Celebrity news from People magazine. This ‘Gossip’ is presented via headline and up to two lines of text within the widget itself. Each headline is linked to the actual story on People.com. The website for People magazine.

Shows from previous seasons such as Top Model, Beauty and the Geek, Smallville, Supernatural and Everybody Hates Chris also have widgets. Each widget is themed accordingly as well.

All of the CW widgets use Flash, making them friendly for most blogs, social profiles and even Myspace.

CW widgets

Jajah Buttons: Widget badges for open calls on Myspace

September 27th, 2007

Jajah has just pumped up their VOIP service offerings even more spreading to blogs and websites fro today on by allowing you to place a jajah Button, a widget badge that replicates the service module that will be familiar to Jajah users.

This does shows how much ground jajah has won lately thinks in part to the now infamous Skype outage that made jajah new users and usage rates to skyrocket and put them beyond their proyected marks.

the offering of a widget for open calls does shows that they are confident in the uptime and quality of the service enough to go all for it because, as simple as it may sounds there are other services that sole angle is precisely that.

the widget works in the same way your main module in jajah dashboard works with the difference that in this case there is only one way, the place you are calling from, you choose the country and your number, push cal and jajah operator will call you and call the jajah user to provide the call to both.

Since i am a Jajah user myself i can say it does works as expected and that there are n surprises just yet, i will place my personal jajah button, don´t expect me to answer all calls, becausa jajah also allows me to fix the rates of the calls i want to recieve, set the countires and also even if i have agreed to recieve them, decline or send a busy message if i change my mind at any point of the process.

this is a everywhere widget (myspace,blog, website) done in flash and it can be customized complete in several color levels and sizes.

Jajah Buttons