Windows Live Gallery is a marketplace of content for users of the Windows Live Ecosystem and that includes of course the Windows Live Gadgets..
It deserves a more insightful post on it`s own but for the moment there is some notable news to tal about:
Updating and on the move
For some reason, Microsoft decided to leave the Live content marketplace as some of the things to get updates at the last moment while most of the Windows Live products have been updated.
The gallery is changing and morphing to be faster and offering a easy way to navigate the content offered in it, but it is in no way the last update it will recieve this year but it is nice to see that it is finally being updated and that must only mean one thing: more content to offer is surely to arrive into it and that also means more and better gadgets in it.
Monetization
A interesting development of the update is the introduction of the Microsoft Points Payment System that any Xbox Live and Zune Marketplace user knows very well. the MS points is Microsoft solution to micro payments and a global currency by allowing anyone in the world to buy something at the same price in MS point not depending on the currency of the country the user is in and by allowing a electronic money wallet to manage those points so there is a sense of auto moderation.
The introduction of the MS points indicates that you will be able to buy premium content from the Gallery that will surely be priced at a very low range in what Bill Gates refered as a "micro purchase" where you could get to pay quantities that would not be possible to do by credit card because of the prohibitive transaction charges and that would even dare Paypal boundaries.
and then there is the reference of "stores" in the gallery so that mans that developers and contributors to the gallery can get revenue from their work thanks to that.
More to come*
Of the interesting things about what could be coming to the Live gallery in terms of gadgets comes as some rumours that i got a hold of and that given the source sounds very plausible:
1.-Gadgets getting the full atention, high spread and focus of the gallery
of course, if you are gonna put some stuff to sell, you are gonna sell gadgets that can be placed anywhere in the Live Ecosystem, who is going to buy a pack of emoticons or backgrounds?
2.-Context Gadgets arriving to Live Messenger 9.0
there has always been the petition of WLM users for plugins and some limited development on that comes in the form of the WLM plus plugin but never something from the source. now it seems that WLM will nevr get plugins but they may get context gadgets thanks to a silverlight integration to the application. the reason for not allowing Plugins are security reasons because after the last report that there are now over 400 million Live ID`s and there are now over 320 million Live messenger users and that WLM is more targeted by exploits than Internet Explorer (that is getting more secured in XP in the IE7 version and is pretty much secured in Vista unless the user is the one that puts it at risk).. as some of the recent secrity threats found in WLM 8.1 were found and pretty much everyone is recommended to move to 8.5 to avoid any risk even with the recent patches
Context gadgets in WLM would really make a lot of inroads for Silverlight adoption and a great way to ignite the Live gallery so it does seem like a very possible future.
3.-Gadgets coming to Windows Mobile 7
the next windows mobile operative system right now code named "photon" it is to say that it got Silverlight integration from the let go and that comes with a sort of gadget launcher that seem to be translated version of live.com future gadgets.
also makes sense, i have seen several photon prototype apps and every single one of them were done in Silverligjt mobile so it may happen.
4.-A new refocused Live.com personal start page
As mentioned, it seems that Microsft wants live.com to become a user information bay and not only just a start page, a way to do that would be to have gadgets that provide information around the ecosystem and that works and look the same way, it would be a good way to get ahead of both igoogle and my.yahoo
5.-Gadget Export Gateway
This seems to be almost a done deal because i remember having heard/read a Microsft developer saying that next year any Windows Live Gadget could be usable anywhere.
the only easy way i see they could archive that would be by Silverlight unless they got a more complex development on that but i doubt that MS is going to spend money on converting gadgets to flash instead of Silverlight.
This exporting is something that you can already do thanks to popfly advances uses so i do know it can be done.
To conclude…
The Live gallery has to be the number one thing prety much overlooked until now, so it does remains a great opportunity for Microsoft to take advantage of and it is surely one of the things to look out for in terms of widgets.
Another good take on the update and monetization can be read at Liveside.net:
Adam Kinney is a Microsoft Developer that works in community projects that initially made a Silverlight Vista Sidebar Gadget to follow his closest friends in Xbox Live while in the frenzy of playing Halo 3 so he could know when there could be a good match at hand to be had.
it worked so well that he decided to release it and now you can enjoy a very stylish Vista Gadget that will continue to be improved so you can track your closest five friends at xbox live, support for more friends along many things more are planed so it will be a gadget to watch for
If you want to know more in detail and see it work, you can also watch a video demo of it at Channel 9
For it to work just be sure to have Silverlight 1.0 installed.
If you already have moved to Silverlight 2 beta 1 and noted the gadget stopped working, well i got good news for you all, the gadget has been updated, you can find the update here:
Are you a Live Spaces User but also enjoy Facebook so you want that to show placing a Facebook badge in your Live Space finding the modular Widget (gadget) nature a little complicated?
Well, fear no more because Nic Fllingham decided that he wanted such thing and made a very easy to follow how-to so you can do the same thing in less than 5 minutes.
Niall Kennedy, one of the leading authorities on widgets today, has written an excellent post regarding first steps in widget creation. This is very important for anyone that has widget aspirations. Many developers have the necessary skills to program these little wonders but they may lack some of the insight that comes from experience. This is where Niall’s post will come in handy.
Niall describes baby steps from the very beginning. Like considering a rest state for your widget (when it’s not doing anything) to custom user preferences. There is also consideration for data choices such as RSS info, XML and even plain text. He goes on to describe elements of the finished product and what to consider at this point.
Niall follows up with an insightful conclusion that could only come from someone that is passionate about widgets.
This is a must read for anyone considering widget creation and those already deep into widget development.
Alenty.com a French Web2.0 company, has developed code that determines influence that members have in a community. Then it creates a widget similar to the MyBlogLog visitors widget and displays community members in descending order based on their influence in the community.
This is almost reminiscent of the top commentators widget found on certain Word Press blogs. But with a distinctly different flare. The ‘Hot Scale’ reminds visitors and community members of a particular users influence in the community. Bringing these ‘members’ to the forefront encourages more involvement for the top people and gives lower standing members incentive to participate more.
Widget
At this point I can only assume that the widget is JavaScript based. The sign up process is simple until you get to the ‘add a site’ section. This is where it failed me. Maybe I am not filling out the proper fields or I could be using the wrong browser. The button that allows me to finalize the adding of WidgetsLab to the Alenty widget is grayed out.
So we are denied!
If your fav band is on Myspace then gruvr will map them
gruvr harnesses the power of Google Maps and Myspace to bring you a concert location map. This widget is Flash based so you can put it in your Myspace profile to show the world where your favorite band will be playing next. This only works for bands that have a Myspace profile that is updated with their touring schedule.
The widget is FREE and doesn’t require any registration. If you are looking for the easy widget add they have that too. (powered by gigya)
Did you know gruvr also has a widget for local upcoming-shows - it figures out where you are.
Here: http://gruvr.com/locations/
We would love any feedback from widget experts like you guys. For example what would be a good way to put both widgets on widget platforms like netvibes but allow users to tell it their fave band or current location at install time?
This appears to be a cool widget/service that spiders your blog and creates a tag list in the form of a widget. The tags link to the actual content on your pages giving your readers a new way to navigate your site. The tag links open in a window right on your site and deliver your readers to the content they desire. It’s easy to use so the reader wont get discouraged.
There are different categories for tags so you don’t have to deal with jumbled up mess like those pesky tag clouds (technorati). Jiglu attempts to organize the keywords on your site to make navigation much easier.
We’ll see how it works.
As of this post the spiders haven’t yet visited Widgets Lab so the widget I have placed in the sidebar didn’t have any jiglu discovered tags. It did manage to grab hold of some Technorati tags though for some instant widget usability. Cool!
This widget uses JavaScript. It is completely customizable to the appearance of your blog. Size and multiple color options are available as well as the ability to limit the actual content of the widget. There are also Word Press versions that integrate directly with your widget ready template. Also for Blogger, Movable Type and TypePad. (I just used the JavaScript for ease)
Check out the window that opens when the widget is used.
UStream.TV seems to want that you and your showpage visitor feel more comfortable and get to have more things to do while they see you running around in your underwear or chasing ghosts in your garden (ok, ok, that was a cheap shot at video lifestreaming but bear with me) so they have now enabled you to run widgets in your showpage.
(a example player from ustream showing live time doings/stuff/boredom)
so now you can entertain yourself and others while using the service, but please do it with moderation, given the layout of the showpages i would say that 9 widgets is the top limit you can get away with without making your visitor browser crash or slowdown to a glacial pace considering that you already load up 2 heavy modular widgets in your empity showpage that consists of your video player and the chatroom.
To help you get started they have tailored a website to show you how to put widgets in your showpage and even suggest you what kind of widgets would make sense for you to use:
Friendster recently announced a platform to compete with myspace and hi5. i don´t include facebook in this because it is not competing against it in any way and people should not even try to compare them.
Friendster is the original Social network that came to be when Jonathan Abrams simply decided to make a open version of Match.com. most people don´t know this but the proto basis of social networks is Friendster, and in turn friendster was based on Match.com that were the result of a convergence of dating site adquisition and the merge of them. Myspace creators then just did another evolutionary step from there by mixing Friendster with Blogger to create Myspace and the rest is pretty much history.
Then there is Hi5 that simply diverts directly from Friendster while looking more at the original angle of Dating sites and simply improved upon Firendster while they remained static.
Back to present and we got a Friendster that is still acting reactively and not in a proactive way but in a way that seems quite streamlined and without any sense of risk betting. i applaud their choice of calling their apps widgets because that is what they are. Widgets are widgets even in modular form as Live Spaces shows and remains the most glaring example of modular widgets outside of Start pages, so i don´t see anything wrong with them calling them that, i don´t think it mess with nomenclature either.
This new Widget platform will offer of course a widget directory and i am guessing that it may even allow widgets to break loose in some terms out of it.
Do Widget and App platform have become a commodity?, yes,of course that they have. but nothing less could be expected, there cannot be further evolutiong without reaching a critical mass.
I believe in Link love and i think that this Post from sexy widget is worth a read if you are interested in ways to enhance widgets footprint from a developer/ distributor perspective and if you are a widget user, it is good to know information that is worth your time.
For being a futurist band it surely tooks them quite a lot of time to catch up with the program and use widgets to promote themselves, but i guess they are all about hardware and centralized software and not the web :P.
The botttom line is that Daft Punk is once again quite popular again and is now using a widget to promote themselves in a way that takes the point across of what i talked about when Google released the Gadget Ads that was about using a widget as a undiluted press release, press kit and in some cases even positive PR to blogs and beyond and since this is precisely a press release that unfortunately is not complete yet because there are no videos loaded to the widget and it stirkes me as a too simplistic widget to represent a band like Daft punk it suits the theme well, the intention is what matters in this.
This daft punk widget will be perfect for anywhere you want to put it thanks to flash and it has the decency of not autoplaying at load and offers you mute right away if you desire, everything else is fairly standard.
You can take the widget directly from this display.
Plaxo, the network that touted itself as a Facebook open alternative where wallen gardens of information are not meant to exist just launched this week a way to widgetize your lifestrream feed known as Pulse and the form of a Universal News Feed from the perspective that is the total output of information that you can take out of Plazo Pulse.
In my perspective this is indeed about lifestreaming and social awareness converged thanks to a widget that you take as a point of reference to that convergence of information, and that widget could be considered Online Identity display because it is not just a feed running by it, it is the aggregated feed of all the feeds produced from the services you use.
That in layman terms you can see as Rss news ticker badge where everything displayed is about you for everyone to be aware of.
The widget comes in Script Flavor so, it is more of a Blog widget and that is a bummer considering that it should be everywhere.
If you want to know more about this and plax, you can go and read Sexy Widget take on it:
Airfarewatchdog is a simple but good widget to check out good airfare deals in a newsticker badge style from the city you want. it is a script widget so it is more of a blog sidebar widget but you will be able to get one for the desktop soon enough or so they say.
the widget don`t got much settings but it does it`s job good, so if you are on the lookout for some airfare deals because you travel a lot, or you want to catch a killer deal to give you the excuse to have a trip then this is a widget that deserves a few seconds of your atention.
You need to register to get one but you can easily do so in less than 5 minutes.
Another move in the Start page arena was given today by Google Finance by releasing a iGoogle Gadget Suite comprising of 8 new Gadgets that can be placed en masse by adding them all in a tab or that can be added individually later on.
In terms of financial data in the start page , Yahoo has been the indiscuted leader so far by delivering that information for many years already, last year microsft followed them when the live.com start page was revamped so it makes sense that Google is following that now that they are commited to give a image of been office minded and corporate user friendly.
And to go the extra mile they also offered a Data API for the financial information just in case you want to make your own Igoogle finance gadget or take that data to display elsewhere
UsaToday.com Finally launched some official content widgets for usa readers that follow the newspaper so now you can add to your blog, social network and pretty much everywhere the following UsaToday widgets:
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