New Launchpad Sharing Menu released on anniversary of original release
First, lets get this bit out of the way. comScore Ranks Clearspring as the Number One Widget Network Worldwide
According to comScore, Clearspring logged 254 million unique visitors worldwide in September, easily outdistancing its nearest competitor by 93 million visitors. In addition to ranking Clearspring as the global leader in the widget market, comScore revealed that the company also extended its lead by 34 million in the U.S. market in September, growing 43 percent and reaching over 101 million unique visitors in the United States.
Clearspring has announced the release of their next generation Launchpad widget menu. They have made the menu much more user friendly. Launchpad will re-arrange icons based upon which ones you use most frequently. No more scrolling to the bottom to find your favorite.
Don’t be alarmed if you see a colorful Launchpad window. Custom colors have become available to developers. Now developers can choose to customize the interface to more closely resemble their color scheme.
Check out this cool NFL widget that utilizes the new Launchpad.
The time finally has come and after a little more of Two weeks of advance notice. Youminis.com Startpage will be no more. This is not the only thing that ceased to exist this October. Goowy. Yourminis parent webtop also ceased to exist after being inoperative for a while.
Dear yourminis user,
We’re sorry to inform you that as of October 27, 2008, we will no longer support the yourminis startpage. As a yourminis user, you already know that one of the best things about widgets is their ability to give you access to the content and features you value from different locations across the Web. Because there are already so many great startpage solutions out there supporting yourminis (like myAOL, iGoogle or Netvibes), we’ve decided to let the startpage experts take care of the startpages, so we could focus on what we do best — building widgets.
The startpage link has already been removed from the site (although you can still access the site directly at http://www.yourminis.com/start), and the startpage itself will be completely removed on October 27, 2008, so please make sure to export all of your content from the site prior to this date. Although we know that this is an inconvenience, you can export your feeds data as an OPML file, take most of your content, and import it into other startpage solutions (see instructions below). yourminis widgets will continue to work on other sites as they have in the past.
Yourminis startpage and the Goowy Desktop were at some point in the late 2007 one of the best example of good widgets and good widget implementation. i also found odd that the Goowy and the Yourminis Startpage was not one and the same. this decreased the focus of the two products from the letgo even as active projects. nonetheless. they were the respective best Startpage and webtop done in flash. this were also the reasons why it got acquired by AOL. because they were good and one of the best Widget Startups back when they bought them. but the purchase of Goowy/Yourminis was a technology & team acquisition. Yourminis is what now powers AOL Widget Ads, and its also part of the new My.AOL. Goowy Webtop is now part of AOL Mail. something i find funny is that AOL also released a RIA AOL Mail based on Silverlight 2. i have tested them both and there is just no contest. RIA AOL Mail truly shines even as a Beta. i wonder if what is being added to the regular AOL mail will have a RIA AOL Mail counterpart. but that is something for another post.
So. a Final Goodbye To Yourminis Startpage and to Goowy Webtop and Hello again to AOL that will now bring Widgets to all. something i of course plan of keeping up with. so if you were using yourminis or goowy. the new My.AOL and the new AOL Mail do deserve a try. but if anyone represents a Widget based Flash, Flex or Silverlight powered Startpage. this is the time to let all those Yourminis and Goowy Orphan users Know of it.
One the immediate reactions from Gigya announcement of gaining the #1 spot when it comes to Widget Companies was that many previous minor partners started evaluating extending their relations with Gigya. once of the best examples of this is Newsgator Widgets. they previously had a deal for promotion and monetization. now. after the Gigya #1 Milestone, this partnership was extended to include Gigya Wildfire. Wildfire is Gigya High Spread Sharing Modules for Quick Link Installs to a lot of Social Networks and Blog Platforms in one go.
Now all Newsgator Widget will sport it. so this should enhance Newsgator presence into Widgets and it is a good thing because it makes High Spread Sharing more and more ubiquitous. something that i have insisted on pretty much all 2008.
Music Widgets are one of the most popular kinds of Widget online and it is getting easier and easier not only to get well featured music widget. but also to make them. if you want to make your music widget you could try out Imeem. they now offer OpenSocial support and Out Of Imeem streaming support too:
So now you can have your web music widget using Imeem Web Wervices API or put together Social Network Widget or Widget-App with Imeem OpenSocial JavaScript API. making a Music Widget is surely getting easier and easier.
With the release of Silverlight 2 and Flash 10 respectively. it is fitting for a lot of people to wonder about Java again. more specifically JavaFX. the Java initiative to compete for the RIA web with Adobe and Microsoft. JavaFX is a Script language for Java. Java while it is still very prominent in the business and Enterprise side it is now a shadow of what it was compared to the late nineties when it dominated the consumer desktop for a lot web apps. Java Applets were the way to do big web apps back then. this of course changed with the insurgence of AJAX and Flash taking the center stage.
This is of course now changing again. Ajax and Flash are no longer enough for Fully Featured Web Apps. even with the insistence of Javascript innovation (Firefox, Chrome) in browser and Ajax Refining (IE8) this is not going to be enough to push the web and blurring of the web with the desktop. Adobe responded with Flex (MXML) that is a script language applied with Flash and Silverlight that brings XAML and .NET to table. Java is pushing JavaFX Script in a implementation similar to Adobe Flash + Flex .
In order to unleash JavaFX. Sun is now also giving Java a restructuring and tweaking so it can be more agile. install faster, occupy less space and give out better performance. You only need to Download Sun Java SE 6 Update 10 to see how Java has changed. i downloaded it and i must say i had the same impression with it as i had with Flash 10 and Silverlight 2. it is a update that Refines and Extend what you already know and indeed bring more performance gains. Something that Java needed more than anyone else given it is the biggest download compared to Adobe and Microsoft plugins. JavaFX is a powerful contender. it carries more power than Flex and Silverlight but it also got a lot of disadvantages in terms of performance and maturity compared to Flex and Silverlight that are now quite advanced in the run with each other. JavaFX was supposed (while not officially) to launch in alpha on the fall of 2007. this never happened and it launched in alpha 6 months or so after that. If JavaFX beta fails to launch in the fall 2008. it will be too late for them in the Consumer Desktop. they already face a tough competition if they manage to launch and even if they deliver something amazing it is unlikely they will be more than a 3rd place in the run against Adobe and Microsoft. unless Google haves a change of heart and decides to adopt JavaFX. but such a thing seems unlikely given their Google Ajax + Google Gears strategy.
Even then. this new java update is a step in the right direction for sun and it is good to have it. even if took years for it to finally arrive.
With the release of the second Beta of Opera Mobile 9.5. Opera also announced a Widget Contest for developers called X Widgets Challenge. this forms part of their strategy to defend their Browser in the mobile market from Firefox and Skyfire and as a plus to promote the Desktop version of the Browser.
There are $10,000 in prizes and in this times of Economic Doom & Gloom. this is the kind of opportunity that should appeal to anyone interested in widget development. they call them X widgets because they are cross device widgets. widgets that need to work in the desktop Opera browser and in the Opera Mobile 9.5 browser. so it also helps Opera against the coming wave of competition they will face with Silverlight and Flash on Mobiles. so why not give them a break and get some money and experience in the process too?. if you don`t trust them because they are Norwegian and they are weird. don`t fret. they are trusty as Canadians. they are cool. i vouch for them.
Are you up to the challenge?
Opera is challenging developers to create cross-device widgets or “X-Widgets” that can be used on both mobile phones and PC/Mac computers.
An example of an X-Widget might be a shopping list you keep both on your computer and mobile phone. That way you can update it whenever and never lose track of what you need to pick up at the store. Another could be a simple game that you can play on your computer, then pause it, and continue on your mobile phone – perfect when you are going for a high score. One more could be an online auction widget, where you could follow an auction both at home and on the go, and bid right up to the last minute!
Cash prizes galore!
Opera is stepping up and awarding generous cash prizes for the best overall X-Widgets submitted.
1st prize: $5000
2nd prize $2000
3rd prize $1000
In addition you can win t-shirts and $50 Amazon gift cards if you’re one of the first 20 qualified entrants. The best weekly widget will be rewarded with a $300 Amazon gift card.
If your X-Widget is among our top picks, we will promote it on widgets.opera.com and you might also find it bundled in our next widget product release!
Yes! How do I get started?
Check out our Opera Widget SDK which has an emulator and access to the Opera Widget manager on Windows Mobile and Symbian phones to help you test and play with your creation.
Rules
Have a read through these rules before you roll up your sleeves:
X-Widget submissions must be able to run on both the widget emulator included in the SDK and on your desktop.
On the emulator, the submission must support QVGA (portrait and landscape) and desktop.
You can upload newer versions of your widget, but remember, only the latest approved version will be judged (be careful when adding or removing features).
You are allowed to submit a maximum of 3 widgets, and are encouraged to focus on quality over quantity.
Coding standards are to use a separate markup for styling and scripting.
Submitting your X-Widget
To submit and participate in the challenge you have to:
Become a registered member of the My Opera community (sign up).
Change is hard. but constant change is the base of living and it is inevitable. however once people have set their mind on something. a framed perception is archived and this perception becomes a commodity and a invocative element of personal routine and personal habits. something that generates a refined Know-How for over time. this in turn creates a individual experience i call Comfort Reality Zone. This is the reason why people refuse or resist change when it comes into changing a multi level experience. this is why it is so common for people to resist change when it comes to software and web services.
When a Web Service changes. you are changing 2 things in the user mind:
1.-Perceived Appreciation
If you change the look of things. you change the user reaction. i remember reading that Meebo had a burst of new users when they changed the color of the home page to blue. minimal change. but it meant a lot because people refreshed the evaluations of meebo thanks to a new first impression. there is a multitude of examples on this. but this example is perfect to frame my point here.
2.-Know-How Culture
If you change the organizational design of a web service as it happened with Facebook. you have just changed completely the knowledge its own users had about the service. you have disrupted what they knew and this creates a new learning curve instantly. I personally think the New Facebook is way way way better than the old facebook. even if they shamelessly riffed a lot from many services in order to create it and then claimed it as totally their own doing. but that it changes everything for the user.that is true. but i think it is justified by the fact that the changes are an improvement. but then i am a Early Adopter and i am always on the edge of new. but to someone who Facebook is a fifth or a third of their whole online experience on a daily basis. this can be hard to accept and even traumatic since you pretty much FORCED the user to change its behavior completely.
In the case of the new iGoogle. it is more of a case of the first instance. Facebook change on the other hand is a case that touches strongly on both instances. and while Facebook and iGoogle can afford it thanks to the protection its brand and the service mindshare gives them. doing this on a small service is something that more than not has killed the service because users are not as invested and engaged enough to cope with change and it is 99% likely that the brad is to weak to generate affinity and mental retention. it is actually preferred to do a completely revamp and changing the brand and name included if your service is young.
Even then. i cannot help getting amused when users from a service revolt from change that is without a doubt better than what was before. just like Frederic Lardinois reports in his RWW blog post. good read. recommended.
The Final “Name” for the LG KP500. you know. the very LG Renoir inspired phone that at the same times is a dig at Samsung Anycall and Omnia (a little) and that comes with the Widgetized Desktop based Flash UI that unless you are blind can easily be compared to Samsung own Widgeized Desktop TouchWIZ UI is not finally named. its name is Cookie.yes, for real!.
LG Cookie is really a bold move in what can be seen as a cheap features phone that is a in the middle of being a Smartphone and a Mediaphone. it counts with:
Quad-band GSM, GRPS/EDGE, 3″ touchscreen display, 3MP camera, accelerometer, BT 2.1, FM radio, an accelerometer and that is thumb optimized so it can be used with one hand.
The Price?. it will be quite cheap. the speculated prices for it are:
1.-$200/Out of Contract
2.-"$100/1 year Contract
3.-“FREE”/2 years Contract
If the prices hold trough. you will be having a hard time getting a cheaper featured phone than the LG cookie. i actually see it as the perfect phone to buy to your kids or tweens or the right phone if you want a phone that is modern but your main concerns are having a good “no hassles” phone with solid basic to mid range features. the fact it got widgets it is a plus given you are reading this blog.
There are also new shots from the Flash UI in the LG Cookie that confirm it is a great choice given its price:
Its amazing that a simple JavaScript could be so useful. ConveyThis is a small widget that will easily fit anywhere on your blog.
Don’t let the small size fool you though. When clicked, you are presented with a window that allows you to choose from 29 different languages (via country flag) that you want the website translated into.
Your blog will then be opened in a new window or tab and translated via the service you have chosen. Google Translate, Live Translator, Babelfish, World Lingo, Promt, InterTran and SDL are all available to do the translating for you.
I have heard that no translation is perfect and I believe that it will be a long time before perfection is achieved in this field. However, sometimes a bad translation is better than no translation at all. There are millions of untapped internet surfers out there that skip right over a page because they can’t read it.
Millions of advertising dollars that could be earned, may go unrealized because of a lack of translation.
Registration is required to get the ConveyThis translation widget. After registering you can log in to your account and view detailed translation statistics, including which languages your pages are most commonly translated into, and also see which pages are translated the most on your website.
Registration also allows you to choose different colors for your widget, helps to promote your site to foreign speaking audiences and increases overall traffic.
3 months after Beta 1. Opera has now finally released Opera Mobile 9.5 Beta 2. these new Beta should mean that we will see the final Opera Mobile 9.5 release as soon as December of this year if all goes well.
This new beta brings Symbian UIQ support for the first time and carry Updated Opera Mobile Widgets that were developed using the also updated Opera Widgets SDK. beta 2 comes with sample widgets like bubbles, Accuweather and a a very complete Twitter Widget Client. which serves as the top of the crop of the examples that come with the beta 2.
If you download the Opera Widgets SDK Kit, you will also find the following updates:
-Opera Dragonfly debugging tool - Develop faster with this tool for debugging JavaScript, inspecting Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and the Document Object Model (DOM). Find your errors and get your widget right. -Widget manager for on-device testing – Widget managers for S60, UIQ and Windows Mobile are included with in the SDK for testing widgets directly on the mobile phone.
This latest beta shows that it will be not easy for Firefox Mobile or Skyfire to go against Opera in the mobile arena. i will be surprised if the final release don`t includes support for android too as a way to unsettle Google Chrome on Android devices. that would make for a nice payback from Opera given how much Chrome copied from Opera Browser.
Grooveshark is a Music search engine + Music Online Service. just like seeqpod and many others. they are good and they know it. that is why they have now adventured into the world of Widgets powered by them. Grooveshark Widgets is the Widget Editor page where you can quickly create your Music Playlist Player Widget in no time and without having to upload your own songs. but with the option to do so if you want to.
The first thing you note is how well designed the Grooveshark Widget Editor is and how everything feels very polished.your first step is choosing from the available Widget Skins/Themes. right now there are only two. one looks ok and the other truly sucks. i am amazed that they went with such a horrid design to highlight this new service. it is truly one of the worst designs i have seen this year.
Since there is not much of a choice you will end up with the Chamelon Skin i just called horrible and will try to customize it to be less ugly. it is almost certain that you will fail and the widget will still be ugly. but at least is free right?
Once you have your design setup. you will pass to step two and choose your music to be played in the widget. this is fast and easy and the grooveshark database is good and found many non commercial bands i threw at it. one click and your widget is updated on a live preview window without a hitch. once the service gets more skins. it will be a really really good Music Widget service.
Now that you have picked your songs, you can press finish and your widget code will be generated. and you will also be offered options as to how you want to embed your widget into your page, your social netowrk profile or blog sidebar. this thanks to one of the new Clearspring Lauchpad modules (High Spread Sharing) that assure you to be able to take your widget to the top 30 online destinations with ease.
And this is how your widget using the Chameleon skin will look once in your blog under the standard measurements and settings. the Grooveshark Widgets service is really good but as i said. they need better Widget Skins ASAP. other than that it should be a great option for anyone to use. i would compare the service to a mix of Mixwit with Deezer. those are good Widget services to be compared with so give Grooveshark a try.
A new, not so new Plurk Widget. this time is the Flash based Plurk Timeline Widget. as all may or may not know Plurk is a Nanoblogging Social Messaging service like Twitter and Jaiku. but it shares more things from Jaiku. Plurk UI is Timeline based and it got many Quirks and Features specific to it.
It now even has two desktop apps doing the rounds in Beta, one in Private beta and the other in Open Beta if you don`t want the Timeline UI. you can also get other official Plurk Widget that is JavaScript based and that i have talked about before.
This is now the turn for the Plurk Timeline Widget.
The Widget is very simple. it is flash based, it depicts a mini version of Plurk showing your last posted plurk notes and the last plurks from some of your plurk contacts too and it also carries a quick invite link to plurk if you decide to go join and follow the widget owner. in this case that would be me.
And once you have set the size( i choose 300px.). you are presented with only two choices. Myspace or grabbing the code and paste it yourself wherever you want it. weird because they previously offered a Gigya Wildfire High Spread Sharing module. so, i wonder why they dropped it from the options. so if you don`t use Myspace, you can then grab your code. drop it and it will look like this one here:
I like the Widget. it is ok and it got a novelty approach in how it “replicates” plurk most notable differentiator. but it really needs to add Customization for Height, Colors and skinning so it can be compelling enough as a representation of Plurk. and also bring back High Spread Sharing. one single supported Quick Install service and the embed code does not cut it anymore.
Yahoo Messenger Pingbox is a mirror equivalent of Live Messenger IM Control. it lets you chat with visitors in your website, social profile and blog. While there are others like the Meebome IM chat Widget or Digsby IM Chat Widget (which is a Clone of Meebome). they are to basic to be compared to Live IM Control or to Yahoo Pingbox.
That is because both are good looking in their respective styles. but i must hand it to Yahoo. it outdoes what IM Control set to do. this if course not a coincidence since Pingbox is recent compared to Live IM control and it has not been updated in quite a while.
Pingbox is very rich looking and it blends well thanks to the styles you can add to the widget. you can easily create your Pinbox Chat Widget thanks to a very well done Flex based Widget Editor. i created mine in less than one minute:
Once you are done, you just click the next button to generate your Pingbox Widget. you will be presented with a very simple High Spread Sharing panel that includes the options for what Yahoo Considered the Top places for you to use PingBox. these are: hi5, friendster, myspace, blogger, xanga, livejournal and Live Spaces. you can still of course put it everywhere by grabbing the code. you can also set the size for your widget and update the code quickly while also seeing a live preview of it.
Once you decide where it will go or what code you will choose. just copy and paste it wherever you want it and it will look just like this one:
The Pingbox Widget impressed me because it feels incredibly light and snappy. this may be because i am using Flash 10 already and because it comes from Yahoo (they do great widgets) so it leaves me completely satisfied and i don`t fear to say it is better than Live IM Control. This later if the rumors are true will no longer will be iFrame based but Silverlight 2 based. so lets see how it does once updated. for now. if you use Yahoo Messenger (preferably 9.0 for full interactivity) there is simply no contest. use this one. totally recommended.
Fat Widgets, the kind of widgets that are fat is not because they occupy lots of screen real state but because they slow down the load of a profile page, a blog or a website.
This is a problem Duncan Riley brought up last week. this was of course before Flash 10 or Silverlight 2 release that improve rendering but he does makes a point. fat widgets are no good and while they may load faster thanks to Flash and Silverlight latest releases. the plugins will not be able to anticipate if the widget is well made or if the service hosting it is good. any of those two things can ruin a good widget and that should be a very important thing to note for anyone doing a widget:
1.-It is well made?.
Does it loads well in slow or average machines?. this is important with the increase of netbooks in the market.
2.-The host is good?
What does it matters if your widget is light and well made if your host sucks?. this will make your widget to not load properly, load slowly or break. this can also affect every single page using your widget. so choose wisely.
This subject reminds me of Derek observations and my own from over a year ago. a lot has changed since then but. we are not in the clear yet. i hope in one year from now. i will not have to bring this matter up again and that we finally get pass this issue.
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