Springwidgets offer great custom options. You can generally choose the height and width of any widget they offer and most have a unique custom option such as scrolling text, blinking lights or some type of animation.
Everything they put out is Myspace friendly. They will also work on Xanga, iGoogle, hi5, Blogger and pretty much anywhere you can edit your layout or HTML.
All SpringWidgets are original and can be used for free.
The SpringWidgets developer pack is one of the most powerful widget creation tools out there. Complete with tutorials and sample widgets as well as forums to ask for help if you do get stuck. They even have an API to help put the finishing touches on your widget project.
I have not posted about SpringWidgets in a long time and for this, I am sorry.
So Lets have a look at whats new over at SpringWidgets:
Widget or Gadget? Whats Hot is more of a Gadget that a widget. It’s designed to work on your MyAOL startpage or iGoogle startpage and delivers a cool image cloud depicting whats hot on the net right now. The gadget updates in realtime. So you’ll always have fresh content at your fingertips (eyeballs)
Whats Hot can be customized to deliver the news that you are most interested in. Whether it’s the spoiled princess drama (Brit and Paris) or the latest Dallas Cowboys news. The choice is up to you!
This is in some ways similar to the Quintura widget found in the sidebar.
Both are working the visual angle.
Quintura delivers related search content in visual form whereas Whats Hot delivers Internet news via images associated with the event.
Quintura widget can be put on your personal blog or web page, away from iGoogle and AOL.
San Antonio Spurs have partnered with Clearspring to bring you the ‘Spurs Team Widget’
With this widget you can watch news and highlight videos, catch scores and current standings and even buy tickets. Clearspring creates awesome widgets with a whole host of ‘One Click’ add options to your favorite blog or social profile pages. I especially like that fact that the widget is viral and you can grab the embed code right from the widget itself.
Myspace users who are Spurs fans will be happy too. The Spurs widget works there as well.
Ticketmaster is the first primary [original sale] ticketing company in the United States to offer an affiliate program.
It appears that TicketMaster has created an affiliate program where webmasters can create a widget to display upcoming events (of their choice) to their audience. Any clickthroughs that result in a sale earn the affiliate a commission.
I assume the commission is of course subject to convenience and handling fees. But whatever, $0.05 is better than nothing.
(the above line was written before I had a chance to read Marshall’s take, over at R/WW)
Affiliates will receive fifty cents for each ticket they sell priced between $20 and $60, $1.50 for tickets priced between $150 and $199, and up to $5.00 for tickets priced above $500. That’s a 1% commission on $500 tickets, hardly a generous sum.
I eagerly await the days when performers decide to abandon the TicketMaster monopoly and start selling their tickets direct to the fans. (without the outrageous fees) See Radiohead skips record producer…makes music directly available to fans.
No one can deny that being having a Blogger Blog does makes things a lot easier most of the time compared to other platforms when it comes to Google related integration and it is time for Blogger usersto benefit from that in YouTube. because taking a page from the way one click widgets work in Blogger now you got the option to share your YouTube videos as a post in one simple click, select your Video, click share, follow intructions, publish and that is all you gotta do.
Vectorform is one many developing companies experimenting with silverlight while they await more tools and the final release of SL 1.1 that allows Rich Internet Applications to work inside or outside the browser in the same way Flex/AIR works for Adobe.
While they wait, the don´t wast any minute to push themselves to design pretty cool silverlight displays, apps and now even games. one of those is a Silverlight Twitter Widget you can post in your site as long as you want to host andinstall it yourself. something that may be more atractive for regular website or for the DIY crowd.
but it is very easy to host any silverlight related development if you got a Live Id, just go to Silverlight Streaming, sign up follow some instructions and you are ready to go to host any silverlight widget or application you want for your own use.
I recommend it as a way to practce for greater things to come since Silverlight widgets and apps are getting cooler and cooler as time passes.
As with most things that spur discussion on the Blogosphere, there is a recent confusion about what is a widget and what it is not caused by a Usa Today article that makes a mess of a already convoluted matter that places all facebook apps as widgets and well, pretty much anything as a Widget something that of course have ticked off people like Nick O’Neill from All facebook and that in a attempt to simplify things goes to literal on what a widget is.
as i am not a stranger to discussions like this where terms and the use of words depends on form like when people call everything a hack, no matter if it is a method or a mod. in the end it was a futile discussion because everyone still calls everything a hack without distinction and a lot of the times without reason.
In this case is about the form of use and the form of presentation. lets take igoogle and live spaces as a example. a rare moment where Google and Microsoft thought that they had to rename their widgets as Gadgets. the reason to do that was because of the way they were going to be presented and the form they were going to be used, they are modular widgets distributed in a proprietary or unique ecosystem so given the attention to that, they found proper to state them as gadgets, something that reflects their modular nature.
meanwhile widget are now seen as a portable/embedded code where the function is generated elsewhere and just displayed on demand for users. something that does exemplifies the best aspect of widgets but cannot ignore other way of presenting them and forms of use, be them as installable (you host the code, you host the end display) mostly a case for website script widgets or Modular ( you get into a platform of your choice,there are predefined non shareable or undockable widgets generated for your use with the platform) as you can see in live spaces as the perfect match for that example and to some extend Blogger and wordpress.
The bottom line is that it really don´t matters if you prefer one or another, what mater is that widgets can come in many forms and that such forms affect their nature so you cannot pin them to one sole definition.
besides that confusion, the usa today article talks about how widgets exploded into the web and now can define a start up succes or how a widgets can BE the main service of a start up. something that has really changed everything in 2007.
CoverItLive extends from the idea of be able to lifestream to your users in the same way that Ustream or like BlogTV and leverages the work behind those services into a widget so you can use it in a widget.
i find it a mix of BlogTalkRadio, BlogTV and Ustream, in that very order.
The novelty in the service itself is that it lets users to extend their reach and grow a new kind of audience beyond common blogs and also serve as a way of promoting yourself assuring you get more regular blog readers.
Certainly a interesting idea, even if i find the service a little confusing for common bloggers but it should not a problem to power bloggers and people coming from the lifestreaming side that have decided to start a blog.
In a not at all surprising move Microsoft has released Developer tools for Facebook integration for Windows Mobile for the .Net Compact framework that allows not only to integrate better Facebook to Windows Mobile in a way so you can browse the mobile version and now check out supported Apps while doing so, but it also allows you to use the set of API´s to exchange information from the device to the apps.
This integration and tools can let anyone with a facebook app or even a facebook widgets to gain a extra audience in Windows Mobile*.
Given the integration is for the .NET compact framework it will be supported for wm5 and wm6 across all versions.
The IM initiative is not new, but now has given a second round with great results so it is always a right time to talk a little about it.
Basics are simple, if you are a Windows Live Messenger user and you are used to chat quite a lot in it everyday then what you would think if someone told you that those hrs you spend a month sending Instant messages could turn into money you could send to a charity cause you can also choose?
That is the deal, you chat and for every regular length message you send in anyl IM sessionwhile using the WLM client will count as 1 cent (aprox) you can contribute to a charity that Microsoft will give in your name.
Sounds cool?, it is.
Now, there is no reason you are not proud about that and want people to know that you are in the IM initiative program while also letting others check it out, so you can choose from a set of button and banners to put everywhere you want:
Here is a simple and quick way to display your blog’s current page rank. The page rank display is updated as your page rank changes.
This HTML widget should work anywhere you can edit the HTML. Blogs and Social sites are just a few of the possible locations for this widget.
If you register with displaypagerank.com you will be added to their ranks of widget users.
Lemonade.com offers a revenue share store front where you can select a general category of products to sell to your readers. The product list includes offerings from major retailers such as Wal Mart, Netflix, At&t iTunes and more.
Lemonade says that you, as the publisher and promoter of your stand, will earn 80% of the commission from each sale. Your PayPal account will be credited each time you reach $10 in earned commission. Some of the wording on the Lemonade site indicated that you might be paid simply for clicks on products without an actual purchase. Maybe I am reading this incorrectly.
So here is the text as found on the Lemonade site:
Visitors to your web page or profile will see your lemonade stand and click on the products and offers that you recommend. Each time a visitor clicks on or buys something from your lemonade stand, you make money. As a lemonade stand owner, you keep 80% of all revenue generated (from retailer commissions, leads and referrals, and advertising placements from your stand and we keep 20% for setting up all of this stuff and making it super easy for you. When you reach a minimum balance of $10.00 we will credit your account via PayPal.
Flash widget
The Lemonade Stand is a Flash widget. So it is conceivable that you can earn money right from your Myspace page. Lemonade comes with Facebook integration built right in. So now you can easily earn a few $$ from your Facebook profile.
Slideoo is one of those widget services that can be easily explained and understood with the slogan alone. and as easy as it is to explain, it is easy to use. you charge up the page, use the form in the site without registration and then generate the code/install for your blog, social network or website.
Slideoo generates a flash slideshow that can be used to replace your header, footer, use it in a post or as Myspace bling.
It only works for flickr but it is very fast to load and to render the photos so there is nothing to complain about, just to wish for that it could load more than 25 pics for slideshow.
there is no doubt that Flash based photo widgets are one of the most common widgets but in terms of form and execution, i can say that slideoo deserves the credit of being not only god but unique enough to deserve anyone consideration.
Just in case you think that placing a badge it is too much and that you lose screen state then you can use a small status indicator like those you get to use from pretty much any IM system: