Create custom maps for your blog with yourGmap

by Derek Anderson	Stumble this!	September 17th 2008

A yourGmap is an excellent way to display a vast amount of information.

With yourGmap you can create maps that use Google Maps as a base and add many different markers for different locations, customize zoom settings display satellite imagery etc.

These maps, when completed, are actual working maps that can be zoomed into and you can also change your location to view different objects such as streets and addresses. Any map you create can be embedded in any web page that will handle an iFrame.

Check out some working versions here:
Store locations in New York City
Office locations around the world
Record places you visited on a trip

Get a yourGmap

FEMA Federal Hurricane Response Widget

by Avatar X	Stumble this!	September 03rd 2008

With all the hurricanes coming and going in August and the ones still left to come for September raising awareness about general useful information is quite a big deal. thinking on that. there is now a Federal Hurricane Response Widget at the Homeland Security site. this is a simple iframe widget that comes in 3 predefined sizes but that looks exactly just like the one in the photo of this post. nothing fancy. just a info widget. but given the information it spreads. it is more than understandable it is so simple and also a good thing it also exists.

So go grab it if you find it it is relevant to you without worry. you can put it pretty much everywhere too. from your myspace page to your website or your blog.

FEMA Federal Hurricane Response Widget

via TC

Zoho enters the digital document game releases Zoho Share, aims at Adobe, Scribd and DocStoc

by Avatar X	Stumble this!	August 26th 2008

Zoho surely not stops surprising me. they must be one the most daring companies around today. they are in the hardest spot you could be in and yet they continue to raise the bet. that is not only daring but also a little crazy. Zoho as some, if not most of you know is the Google Docs competitor.

Zoho produces what i consider the best and most complete Web Office Suite. it is way superior and more broad than Google Docs. so much that they not only say they compete with Google but are crazy enough to try to aim at the unbeatable Microsoft Office division Google  itself among big companies like Sun, Apple,Adobe and many other have failed miserably to unsettle. yet Zoho believe they can compete. they are of course wrong in the case of going against Microsoft. but they do have a nice chance of unsettling Google and Adobe. Adobe is already prepping up its own vision on what a  Web Office Suite should do. Google Docs is already dominating this space and Google takes very seriously the threat of Adobe and Zoho to their own solution that aims to hurt Microsoft. the dilemma here is that it will be even less possible for any of them to challenge Office since a competition war between the alternatives to Microsoft  is already brewing.

Zoho Share on the other hand aims to the Digital Document space. a space that is actually dominated by independent companies like Scribd and DocStoc. a space where Adobe recently entered with Adobe Share and where they are actually the underdog. the entrance of the Web Office Suites into this space was to be expected, and it is something i said back at the start of the year when i commented on one a Scribd initiative.:

This initiative is a good way too for scribd to increase their footprint and their brand. and boy if they need it. as i already said.  this space is going to get worse for them with Google Docs, Adobe Share and Office Live natural progression into this space in a way it will not leave many Startups able to compete with them. scribd truly wants to be the company left standing in case they don`t get acquired and also in case other competitors in their space survive.

Later on the Adobe Share update happened, several Google Docs updates went underway and now this unexpected entry by Zoho confirms it. i wonder how long it will take for Google to follow suite now that they are quite late to the party.

Zoho Share Digital Document Embeddables and viewer are actually quite poor. but Zoho is known for evolving fast and they now got a foot in. so l expect them to evolve fast and offer something more akin to what docstoc does instead of scribd. the site in itself is actually good already and should prove a very great addition to those already using the Zoho Office Suite and a good way to persuade more people to try them instead of Google Docs.

Zoho Share

Windows Live Messenger IM Control

by Avatar X	Stumble this!	August 05th 2008

There are already some Chat to IM widgets around and that get quite a lot of use. but pretty much all of them are from third parties. they are made as a communication gateway for a third party Multi IM client. that is of course good on itself and we will see more of them later but first i want to talk a little about Windows Live Messenger IM Control or Live IM Control for short.

This is a First party Widget, well Gadget since it is from Windows Live. that connect with Windows Live Messenger. The Widget is meant for you to use it in your blog or your website if your primary IM client is Live Messenger and there is close to 40% of a chance that may be the case.

And just like the Widgets from third parties its goal is pretty much the same. to let you connect with your readers, friends or clients depending where and how you may want to use it.

Using it is simple and you only need to follow these steps:

1.-Login to your Live Messenger web settings:

Go to this page and log in with the Live ID you use for Live Messenger

http://settings.messenger.live.com/Applications/WebSettings.aspx

2.-Change your Live Messenger web settings:

Activate the option that says “Allow anyone on the web to see my presence and send me messages”

3.-Choose your desired Live Messenger IM control

Go to the Create HTML page and  choose your preferred version

http://settings.messenger.live.com/Applications/CreateHtml.aspx

I.- IM Window

This is the full version and will operate directly in your page

II.-Button

This will show if you are online and allow a browser window to be launched in order to use the Live IM Control widget

III.-Status Icon

Will only show if you are online or not

4.-If you choose the IM Window version you can also customize your Live IM control Widget

Choose you desired size and Color, the HTML code will update once you do

5.-Paste and Start using it

Place it in your blog, your social network profile or you website and start using it.

This whole process can be done in 3 minutes. so there you go.

I will place on in this post in order to demo it. i am not sure if i will have it here in the blog but it will be living here in this blog post.

Pingdom website load test widget

by Avatar X	Stumble this!	July 30th 2008

Pingdom is a server and website monitoring service company. but they also offer some free tools for webmasters and the general public. one of those is the Pingdom Full Page Test Widget.  you can place it in your site if you feel the need to promote such a service or you can put it wherever you want for mere curiosity.

It is a iframe widget and you only need to put the url you want to test, and then look at the generated test. it is a good thing because it is supposed to be a representation of how much time it take for a average user to load your website or blog in their computer.

I am happy to see that in a average modern computer it takes 15 seconds to load Widgets Lab that is script and widget  heavy. this of course varies but right now it should take from 10 seconds to 30 seconds to load widgets lab. if your own experience suggest more than 30 seconds please let me know.

With the new Widgets Lab yet to come, we will try to make that 5 to 15 seconds. that widget is a good way to check as a reference.

As you can read, it already did something useful for me, so this widget may also be useful to you.

You use it from here too if you want.

Pingdom

 Pingdom Full Page Test

via Tsunami Times

Wired Celebrity Meter Widget

by Avatar X	Stumble this!	July 29th 2008

I must say that this is not something i would have expected from Wired. i guess they do have changed quite a bit in the last year. Wired wants to facilitate you a ego trip or inspire yo to go out and seek internet fame. the Celebrity Meter Widget is a way to let you know if you are Internet Famous.

“Are You Internet Famous? Use the Wired Celebrity Meter to find out how big a deal you really are. Our algorithm will dig through your personal pages to find out how many fans are following your online exploits.”

<iframe width="420" height="360" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" src="http://75.101.132.141/widgets/webrity">
if Your browser doesn’t support HTML iframes. You will not be able to see the Wired Celebrity Meter. Please try with a different browser.
</iframe>

Not much else to say. you can get the widget embed code within the widget here or as i have posted it.. i do find it disappointing that they could not do a proper Flash or Silverlight widget instead of a common iframe widget. i mean. they are wired….

Wired Celebrity Meter Widget

Hulu raises the bar again, releases 4 awesome Video Badge Widgets

by Avatar X	Stumble this!	July 28th 2008

Hulu does it again. first they launched a service that managed to overcome all the bad rep it first had in anticipation and released very fine video player widgets. then they went with a “in your face” moment to Google`s YouTube and made their Video embeddables searchable within the widget and took video widgets to other level. now they went for video badge Widgets.

It is not that they are super customizable or super good looking. They are not. is the fact that none of the big video services had done it this well and much less YouTube. 

The Widgets released by Hulu are just incredibly well executed. just like i had been telling Widgets should be in 2008.

Hulu released a slew of Widgets, and they can be separated in two kinds:

1.- Low End Video Badge Widget with Embedded Player

2.-High End Video Badge Widget without Embedded Player

When i say Low End i only say that when compared to the High End video Badge Widget from Hulu. in terms of other video services, the low end ones are as good if not better than the widgets from most services.

Lets start with the High End one. that truly blows away the competition up to now.

I.-Video Badge Widget with Embedded Player

This is a Video Badge Widget that got it all. it even resembles a Desktop app or could even pass as a extremely well designed iPhone app for that matter.

Why?. well what other Video Widget badge got the following things?:

• *Search          (full search of hulu programming like in the hulu embeddable video players)
• *Browsing       ( you can navigate the pages like in a website)
• *Sorting         (choose the parameter of the kind of content as clip, tv show or movie)
• *Sections     (featured, most popular recently added, queue)
• *Loggable       (you can load into your hulu account from it and use it for your common hulu use)
• *Preferences   (you can set your widget directly within it)
• *Quick Embed option    ( copy and paste embed code)
• *High Spread Sharing module    ( Vista sidebar,  iGoogle, Netvibes and Facebook )
• *Quick Viewing Embedded Video Player (that comes with its own full set of Options and info)

That makes it the most advanced widget of its kind i had seen up to now. there is of course a simple trade off. it is a Widgetized of Hulu Web Service fitted for iframe. i would not be surprised if this Widget ends up being the direct inspiration of Mobile Hulu and hulu iphone app (or viceverza).

The form also makes it a admirable Vista Sidebar Gadget and Widget for a Startpage or Facebook.

Even then it is truly admirable as a Widget and makes the Hulu service portable since it is completely Widgetized. it well deserves to be embedded here.

II.-Video Badge Widgets Without Embedded Player

A set of  simple to use Video Badge Widgets done in Flash  that can show your favorite clips in Hulu and take you to them but that you not only can get the code via a direct copy embed button click (a clever approach to the now old copy and paste) . something that is appreciated.

There are 3 of them and they comes they follow:

1.- Seasonal Video Badge (in this case summer)

This is a widget without customization, it shows you a set of featured hulu videos that are scheduled from the site every week. this could be seen as the most common Video Badge Widget like the one in any other service

2.-Sorted Picks Video Badge

This a Video Badges that lets you Sort Videos in it from a set of parameters:

• *Most Popular Today
• *Highest Rated Today
• *Recently Added

Then you can choose the kind of content to be sorted:

• *All Videos
• *All TV
• *TV episodes
• *TV clips
• *All movies
• *Featured Films
• *Movie clips

3.-Specific Show or Movie Widget

My favorite from the low end. you get to show the videos you want because you can sort and set your video widget badge from the widget because it counts with ALL of Hulu Programming in it for you to do it. that is a very simple idea, but yet brilliant because it is not common to see yet.

Still. for a first version of their Video Badge Widgets it is a very impressive and well executed first version set  and a must have set of widgets for any Hulu user or even not yet hulu users.. if you are out of the usa. you are then out of luck unless you know of that certain thing you can get to be able to watch the videos. just like me that i am in Mexico.

The release of the widgets was broke by Techcrunch and they also got a video interview  with hulu CTO where the widget is also shown.

Hulu

Hulu Widgets

via Techcrunch

Twitter “3D Fail Whale” Widget

by Avatar X	Stumble this!	July 07th 2008

Ok, this is different to most of what i have posted in Widgets Lab but still manages to stay within the Widgets Theme even if this is more of a BoingBoing like post

The Fail Whale Story

The Fail Whale is the illustration you see above. this illustration called “Lifting A Dreamer” is part of the work of   Yiying Lu, a shanghai born now gone Aussie graphic designer that originally put the illustration in iStockPhoto as a way to showcase her work and make some money and as with any good story never expected what happened next..

Next arrived in the form of Twitter that bought the rights to use the stock photo graphic at 10 dlls as the graphic to be used by twitter whenever the site would need maintenance. the graphic was chosen because of the striking match in color pattern to twitter design and of course for the birdies. it is one of those things full of serendipity like Wizard of OZ and Pink Floyd  “Dark Side of The Moon” things no one can explain but get to happen.

Then came the name of Fail Whale coined in a Tweet (pure poetry right?) by Nick Quaranto in a rare “Eureka” moment.

Why Fail Whale?

The graphic original purpose was to serve as background for whenever Twitter needed to do any sort of maintenance to  the Twitter service. but as anyone that has ever used twitter that never came to be just like that.  just after the graphic was not only created but purchased (the rights of use)  Twitter once thought “momentary” growing pains to scale their service came back to haunt it and it started failing repeatedly during all march of 2008 where people got to get familiar with the “lifting a dreamer” graphic. problems passed on and off during April and returned heavily in May when at the end of that month it would be named “Fail Whale”by Nick Quaranto and so it stuck by the reassurance by Jeff McNeil to Barbara K. Baker of that name that happened in the comments of a Photo that Dave Winer uploaded to Flickr that shows the then still elusive graphic for all to see.

The term Fail comes from the common Internet Culture produced expression “FAIL” that got is own Cult following as a denominated Memetic Phenomenon (a idea/concept that spreads virally thanks to word of mouth and get ingrained into everyone in the process) and is originally derived of the series of phrases “Full of” (Full of Win, Weird, Fail, etc) that originated in Video Games internet forums and that the actual exact source i am not aware. Fail is meant to be said when something has not being accomplished, when something is lame or when the attempt to do something turned awkward.

So you could easily pin all of those to Twitter as a service. even then many were NOT OK with the name and the graphic of the Whale and thought of replacing it with something else like a “Big  TweetBird sitting on a power line” by Mykl Roventine

But the disdain and the discomfort that continued with Twitter and the Graphic only fueled the Fail Whale Fame (thanks to Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone naive push) that finally got its name set in stone (pun intended)  when  Evan Williams, creator of Twitter (Pyra, Blogger, Odeo) acknowledged the name in a Tweet after Tom Limongello  sent him a box of FailWhale T-shirts from the then new Fail Whale Zazzle Merchandise Store that Yiying Lu had set up after deactivating the selling of the now known as Fail Whale Graphic from iStockPhoto because of the demand many had for merchandize with the now famous whale that had its own FanClub (started by Sean Osteen) and Photo Group at Flickr called (Twitter Over Capacity) that is not meant to be a Fail Whale photo group perse but that turned into one because most of the pictures in the photo group had the whale in it. there is even a little animated short too.

The 3D Fail Whale Widget

Everything that gets famous needs a widget. so the Fail Whale needed one and here it is. it is a very simple video widget of the Kinetic Sculpture of the Fail Whale done by Australian Artist and Puppet Master Hilary Talbot. the reasons behind the making of such thing come from her very optimistic ways on twitter and this post:

The hero that is Fail Whale

The best of the widget is that it of course represents a funny statement all by itself and at the same time showcases the very cool piece of work made by talbot of what is now a “Famous Character” captured in  a video with Tweets and all that can be seen in full screen without your visitors need of leaving your page.

<div><iframe src=”http://spiritsdancing.com/failwhale/whaget.htm” width=”185″ height=”225″ frameborder=”0″ name=”whaget”></iframe></div>

(just copy and paste)

This Widget is good if you are a unashamed Twitter Apologist, a Fail Whale Lover or simply you like to kick Twitter while it is down (pun intended) you just need this widget adorning your  blog to make your  favorite Twitter Widget or Badge company.

If you liked this post please tell me what you thought of it, link to it and share it around also if possible

Embeddable Friendfeed Lifestream Widget

by Avatar X	Stumble this!	June 22nd 2008

It is been a while i talked about the official but unreleased FriendFeed Widget.

Such widget is still not out or has been updated in any way and it may have proven to be too simple to many. But if you cannot wait for Friendfeed to get its act together and release a final version of that widget. i got something that can be more satisfying without the need of using other service but friendfeed.

A iframe widget generator for your FriendFeed Lifestream that was made by Arvind “Random Walker “ Narayanan where instead of having just the 5 last updates you can have the last 30 updates, choose the size at will and change the background color so you can integrate it in your blog or website.

The only thing i think it is missing, would be to be able to put a image as header and chose a border but maybe if Arvind does a second version, that will be added.

 Embeddable Friendfeed Lifestream Widget

*This Widget was submitted directly to Widgets Lab, Submit yours now.

Movavi Online Conversion Widgets

by Avatar X	Stumble this!	May 17th 2008

How do you know something has truly turned into a common commodity? when see it inside a widget. that is also a good thing. because it means that it has become really easy to use or accept.

Movavi wants to be the online conversion startup that facilitates you their service inside a widget and in not only one but 3 of them.

You only need to be ok with the rules: 1 video, 1 conversion session at a time, 10 minutes long or 100mb max and you can upload your video and get it converted for free and even get notificated at you e-mail. sounds familiar?. yes zamzar does something like this. but they offer widgets do they?.

Movavi is not as sophisticated as zamzar or media-convert is but they do the job good and they got widgets of course. and that is what matters here. right now you can only convert video or audi from the widget and for some weird reason .flv is not supported for input upload even if it supported in the page as a url load and they don`t have wmv output….. yeah that is really weird.

iGoogle Gadget

The iGoogle Gadget is for Convert and Download videos from youtube  and the like.

iGoogle Movavi

Mac Dashboard

Same case as the iGoogle, it is for Convert and Download online videos.

Movavi for Mac Dashboard

Website/Blog

A bunch of iframe widgets to choose so you can put them at your site. i also find odd there is no matching version with the other two widgets here.

So, while movavi is offering good enough widgets. i would really like to see them do a url/add online widget with better design, more widget versions or a high spread sharing panel and more customization options.

Movavi Website Widgets

All in all a good way for movavi to stand out, but it needs better execution and options to truly make it something notable.

Movavi Widgets

Google Docs Presentation: Embed multiple sized media in a presentation

by Avatar X	Stumble this!	May 14th 2008

There are multiple ways to get a Video Slideshow Widget in your blog right now. but not all come with a landing page, also work as a presentation because you can scale the videos you place in the slideshow that can auto resize at any  and allow you to include text and photos too as you see fit.

That is what you get with the new features in Google Docs Embeddable Presentations

This is a good option to get a easy widget to use in a blog post or sidebar thanks to the sizable presentation widget.

You can read more on it if you want at Bloggeratto (one of my blogs)

Embedded  Presentations