Widgets Lab » Badges

Show Foursquare Checkins with WordPress plugin

Derek Anderson — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 11:18:47 +0000

Foursquare is undoubtedly one of the most popular social location services available today. With a simple app installed on location aware devices such as smartphones and tablet computers, you are able to share the places you have visited or are currently visiting.
This type of sharing is a personal, yet very social activity. Being defined as social, the more you share, the more social you are.

WordPress is a publishing platform that enjoys unprecedented popularity. Among WordPress’s chief uses is the creation and distribution of blog style websites.
Blogs by definition are very social things. They are a place where a person can document and share all of the information and ideas that may interest them.

Foursquare and WordPress

Adding a plugin to WordPress that will allow you to display your Foursquare Checkins is very easy. Simply navigate to the plugin section of your WordPress dashboard and ‘add new plugin’. In the search for plugins field, type this ‘Foursquare Latest Checkins’.
Install this plugin and configure it to get information from your Foursquare account and then place it into the widget section of your WordPress blog. This whole process can be done in under 5 minutes.

As you can see, the widget is clean and simple.

Here you can choose the number of checkins to display.

If you would like to learn more. Here are links to the developers plugin page.
http://blog.no-panic.at/projects/foursquare-latest-checkins-wordpress-widget-plugin/
and a link to the actual WordPress plugin page for this widget.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/foursquare-latest-checkins/

Google Buzz Buttons

Derek Anderson — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 01:38:05 +0000

Today Google announced the official Google Buzz Buttons for your website. This is great! Because up until now, all Buzz buttons were tied directly into your Google Reader account.

We’ve seen lots of people using Google Buzz to share interesting links from around the web. To do so, you had to copy and paste the link from one browser window to another — there weren’t buttons that made it easy to post to Google Buzz without leaving the site you’re on. Savvy sites like Mashable and TechCrunch quickly got creative and implemented their own Buzz buttons, using Google Reader as the backend. But not every site owner should have to hack together their own version of these buttons (and not everyone who uses Buzz also uses Reader), so this morning we’re making copy-and-paste Buzz buttons available for anyone to use.

Well…here they are…in their entirety.

I really think its great that there is now a “Follow Me” Buzz button. I know there have been others…but there is nothing like an “Official” widget to set things right!

You can get your Official Google Buzz Buttons at: http://www.google.com/buzz/stuff

You can read the entire Google Buzz Button post at the Gmail Blog: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/google-buzz-buttons.html

Mother’s day widgets

Derek Anderson — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 22:48:16 +0000

Mother’s Day is on Sunday May 9, 2010. This gives you a little more than a month to outfit your website with Mothers Day widgets, count downs, clocks and any sort of web style card that you can imagine.

Here are a few that we found around the net and gathered for your convenience. This is not a complete list of what is available, but it will get you on the right track for your Mother’s Day needs.

This is a simple Mother’s Day Countdown widget from Widgetbox. There are no animations but it is available in Flash which should be WordPress.com friendly.
http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/mothers-day-countdown
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Here is the Mother’s Day Gift Guide widget. This widget displays 10 gift suggestions for Mother’s Day and also links to mothersdaygiftguide.com where you can find many more gift suggestions with the ability to purchase and have delivered, any of these gifts.

http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/mothers-day-gift-ideasmothers-day-gift-ideas
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This widget is one of the more bizarre widgets available for Mother’s Day. Its a video of a dog made to look like its singing a Happy Mother’s Day song.

Check it out. http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/my-widget-auntleecom-5
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Mothers Day Countdown

Here is one of about seven different Mother”s Day countdown widgets. Each has custom size and color options available.
http://mycountdown.org/Celebration/Mothers_Day/getwidget/
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Myspace Layouts – Get This Widget

Here is a clickable Mother’s Day card that delivers a message to your mother when she clicks through the different levels of the widget.
http://www.pimp-my-profile.com/flash/mothersday.php
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Goto to Pyzam to grab some Mother’s Day Graphics! There’s close to 50 to choose from and all have some form of tie in to Mother’s Day or the celebration of mothers.
http://www.pyzam.com/search/all/mother%27s%20day

auto updating Buzz stat widget from Buzz-Stats.com

Derek Anderson — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 01:21:05 +0000

If you are into Google Buzz…Buzz-Stats.com offers a cool Buzz badge that displays your current followers. The badge also acts as a link to the Buzz-Stats user page associated with your badge. Here people can see stats about your Buzz activity and they can also follow you.

There is also a graph of sorts provided. I believe it only displays the number of followers you have on any given day. Not much change happens on this graph.

Here is the Buzz-Stats page where you can create your own Buzz-Stats badge.

http://buzz-stats.com/

Google “Buzz It” share button

Derek Anderson — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 12:15:57 +0000

Google Buzz and the Buzz It button:

Google released “Buzz” on Feb 9/10 2010 and it has become very popular. So popular in fact that within hours a “Buzz It” button was created.

This button allows your users to easily share your content on Buzz with a single click.

(found this button on this awesome post about BUZZ on AEXT.net Design Magazine)

You will need to edit the appropriate fields in the code to reflect your website’s info.

Have a blog? Increase your traffic by adding a simple Buzz widget. In your blog’s theme, simply use the following URL (replace the appropriate data):

Mashable’s “Buzz It” button.

Head on over to Mashable, TechCrunch & others to see how their usage of the “Buzz It” button has turned out. (Warning: Mashable sports a GIANT Google Ad near the top of their page that resembles some “Buzz” functionality.)