How to find good widgets

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How to find good widgets

by Derek Anderson	Stumble this!	September 11th 2007

Using Google, your email and your brain!

Finding the perfect widget can sometimes be as easy as browsing a gallery of widgets. Snipperoo or Widgetbox or Widgipedia or even Widgetoko and others, offer extensive lists of widgets. These lists include many many widgets. Thousands in fact. Snipperoo claims to have links to nearly 3200 different widgets. This is an incredible amount of widgets to look through when searching for your widget.

Get widgets delivered
Sifting through multiple lists of widgets may sound like fun for a Sunday afternoon. However, most people are a shade bit busier these days. This is why I suggest getting your widgets delivered to your inbox. You wont really receive widgets in your email.
I’m actually talking about having information about widgets delivered to you via Google Alerts. If you create an alert for widgets, you will receive emails telling you when something widget related has been posted on the net. This is actually a great way to get information about any topic you are interested in. I just happen to pick widgets…because I’m interested in them.

I also use Google Reader to subscribe to blogs that occasionally write about widgets and related topics. This is a great way to receive your Google Alerts too. If you email is too busy consider subscribing to the Google Alert RSS feed. The information gets delivered with the same speed. One of my favorite features of Google Reader. Information from sites are separated into folders so you have easy access to individual sites and even look into their past posts for info you may have missed.

My absolute favorite way to find widgets is hunting them down.
Tracking, searching and even the occasional accidental find. These have the best payoffs.
I have found some killer widgets that otherwise I would have missed. These methods are pretty straightforward.
I have used Google to search ‘widgets’ and anything semi related to widgets. Such as gadgets, blidgets, bling, add-ons etc. Another way to find these elusive things is to search for phrases such as “embed this” or “copy this code” or even “grab the code”. Really anything that you can come up with that may be associated with copying a widget code.