Comments on: Fox Interactive Launches Desktop/Website Widget Platform

By: Fox ‘Interactive Media’ To Shut- Down?! - “Flektor & SpringWidgets” « Tejas123’s Blog

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 06:43:05 +0000

[...] products, MySpace parent company Fox Interactive Media is shuttering the SpringWidgets (which launched in 2006) and Flektor (acquired in 2007) widget platforms. Twenty five employees are [...]

By: Fox Interactive Media To Shut Down Flektor And SpringWidgets « ArticleSave

Fox Interactive Media To Shut Down Flektor And SpringWidgets « ArticleSave — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 07:02:55 +0000

[...] products, MySpace parent company Fox Interactive Media is shuttering the SpringWidgets (which launched in 2006) and Flektor (acquired in 2007) widget platforms. Twenty five employees are [...]

By: Fox Interactive Media To Shut Down Flektor And SpringWidgets

Fox Interactive Media To Shut Down Flektor And SpringWidgets — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 22:25:12 +0000

[...] products, MySpace parent company Fox Interactive Media is shuttering the SpringWidgets (which launched in 2006) and Flektor (acquired in 2007) widget platforms. [...]

By: Fox Interactive Media To Shut Down Flektor And SpringWidgets

Fox Interactive Media To Shut Down Flektor And SpringWidgets — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 22:25:12 +0000

[...] products, MySpace parent company Fox Interactive Media is shuttering the SpringWidgets (which launched in 2006) and Flektor (acquired in 2007) widget platforms. [...]

By: Fox Interactive Media To Shut Down Flektor And SpringWidgets

Fox Interactive Media To Shut Down Flektor And SpringWidgets — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 22:25:11 +0000

[...] products, MySpace parent company Fox Interactive Media is shuttering the SpringWidgets (which launched in 2006) and Flektor (acquired in 2007) widget platforms. [...]

By: Globe Swotting with Ramin » Blog Archive » Are Javascript Badges really bad?

Mon, 12 Feb 2007 21:00:21 +0000

[...] On the other hand, if a widget is not working on a hosting service (like MySpace), the reason can be security, but it could also be because the hosting service would like to use that excuse to force people to use their own competing widget service. [...]

By: nonsmokingarea.com » Blog Archive » widgets all over the place!

nonsmokingarea.com » Blog Archive » widgets all over the place! — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 17:40:30 +0000

[...] update: TechCrunch points out that Microsoft’s widget-platform included in Vista will also run locally and on live.com sites. [...]

By: SpringWidgets, for your site and desktop at Platypus Farm

SpringWidgets, for your site and desktop at Platypus Farm — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 20:57:01 +0000

[...] Lots of platforms for widgets these days. The sharing ability is clearly the big idea with this one. They’re making it very easy to create a useful widget for your specific content and have it distributed in multiple ways. You can read more about it at TechCrunch. Bookmark to: [...]

By: Don Synstelien

Don Synstelien — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 18:28:54 +0000

Rick, please visit the SpringWidgets forums with any feeds that you cannot get to work.

http://springwi....com/community/

We are building out additional parsers every day to support variations of feeds that are out there. If you are submitting feeds into the widget and not receiving what you expect, please let us know and we’ll help figure it out.

Thanks for your interest in our product.

By: David Mackey

David Mackey — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 02:19:03 +0000

I’ve tried both Yahoo! and Google’s Widgets, and haven’t been overly impressed by either of them.

By: Yet Another Widget Platform at The Connected World

Yet Another Widget Platform at The Connected World — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 22:46:32 +0000

[...] Yikes, how many widget platforms do we need? Microsoft has widgets for Vista, Apple has Dashboard Widgets for OS X, Yahoo has widgets, Google has widgets. Now Fox Interactive has a widgets platform called Spring Widgets. Strange this is coming from Fox and I’m not sure what they are looking to get out of it. If they wanted widgets for Fox media properties, they could have created their own widgets for the other platforms. I also don’t know how they are going to compete with the likes of Apple, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. And if you’re a developer, which widget platform are you going to develop for? Widgets are cool, but this is becoming a big mess. [...]

By: critix

critix — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 20:38:00 +0000

I think you need a spell-check widget, dude.

By: enoch benjamin

enoch benjamin — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 13:39:38 +0000

A lot of this new fangled stuff is distracting and time wasting. I am self employed and every time I start to play with widgets or a web 2.0 application I have to stop and ask myself – how is this helping me grow my business? Is this really making me more efficient? Is this making my customers smile?

So next time you decide to spend half a day installing and playing with new widget, just write a letter or two to a new prospect or pick up the phone and work on your relationship with your customers.

Your bank account will thank you in the long run.

By: Rick

Rick — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 04:35:36 +0000

Quite frankly I am disappointed. Tried the RSS reader and after entering five different feeds and receiving “unsupported file format” for each one I regretted downloading the thing. Looks interesting but it’s not ready for prime time.

By: I think Mike and Om should get hitched » Mathew Ingram: mathewingram.com/work

Tue, 07 Nov 2006 01:07:46 +0000

[...] I guess what got me started thinking about it was when I noticed that Mike’s blogs, including TechCrunch and MobileCrunch, linked to Om’s blog when he had a post about something, and Om has done the same thing with Mike — which makes sense, since they cover things that overlap a lot of the time, and they also know each other and are friends. Mike has even given a boost to Om’s Widgets Live conference. [...]

By: Clicked : All your phones are belong to us

Clicked : All your phones are belong to us — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 00:45:12 +0000

[...] Posted: Monday, November 06, 2006 4:08 PM by Will Femia Democratic bloggers made a lot of noise today about a “robo-call” tactic being employed against a number of Democratic candidates. I already don’t answer the phone on the principle that I don’t like a plastic box telling me when to jump, but if you’re being driven to insanity by these calls, Josh Marshall has some advice on what to do (not much but publicize the tactic and get the vote out). Of course, in New Hampshire, where they’re a little sensitive about their phones, there appears to be some abatement. Speaking of vote suppression, VideoTheVote.org is set up as a repository for evidence of vote suppression. (Keep in mind the lesson we learn in this next item.) Speaking of citizen activists, now that every device you can buy has a camera built in and professional grade photography equipment is available to non-professional grade pay scales, the question of camera ethics comes up occasionally. One recent issue I recall was when someone ranted (with considerable popular support) about going to a concert and finding a dance floor full of camera phones and PowerShots. Yesterday’s New York City Marathon has raised another issue: sticking yourself in places you don’t belong just to get a shot. I’ll allow the link to do the work from here. (via Matt Law in a NYC photoblogger news group to which I subscribe.) (P.S. For the record, while this woman makes for a good lesson for everyone, I don’t agree that we need to know her name or exact some kind of mob justice.) Speaking of mob justice gone awry (again), if you’re going to distract the punditsphere with a hoax, leave out the names of real people who aren’t part of your hoax. “Michael [Badnarik], candidate for US Congress in TX District 10, speaks against the Military Commissions Act at UT Austin on November 2, 2006.” Whether you agree with this guy or not, I would have expected this type of ad to be more common in this “YouTube Age.” How is it that the TV industry is still able to make hundreds of millions of dollars every political cycle on ads that everyone hates? (Not that I think YouTube or the Internet generally would save us from dirty political tricks. Just ask Jim Talent (no, even I won’t link to that one). Absolute moral authority cards Beck on a recent Saturday Night Live. I tried to find this on the NBC site so I could emphasize my point about YouTube as an unnecessary middle man but … UFO The Greatest Story Ever Denied – An hour and a half long. I didn’t realize there was a line of UFO study that says that UFOs appear on infra-red scopes. I much prefer UFO conspiracies to 9/11 conspiracies. Quarters guy uses his girlfriend as a prop. I’m not clear if he picked up the body spray sponsorship or if he’s making some kind of parody ad. I hope the former because they should totally pay the guy for that. (Is it this quarters guy?) WhoToTalkTo hopes to be the insider’s job search tool. I’m not sure why this is supposed to work. If I were looking for a job, I’d appreciate an inside track, but why would anyone I didn’t know give me one? GoogleTorrents searches BitTorrent sites so you don’t have to do it manually. (Doesn’t change the legal aspect of downloading copyrighted material, however.) Who is this former child star? NOTE: Give yourself a chance to see the “now” picture before you scroll. The answer is on the same page. OTHER NOTE: Be prepared to feel old… very… very… old. Before I leave the office today I’m joining Second Life too. After reading all week last week about rising virtual real estate prices and then talking this weekend to a friend of mine at Reuters about their Second Life bureau, I’m starting to feel not just out of the loop but left behind. UPDATE: I registered but couldn’t connect. I’ll try again from home. The hardest part of the whole thing so far is coming up with a name. Have you ever tried to rename yourself? Damn hard. P.S. The reason I’m not already into Second Life is that I promised myself after wasting a ridiculous amount of time on Riven, the Myst sequel, that I would never again squander my life learning about a place that doesn’t actually exist. So much for that. Deceptive pictures – NOTE: One of the photos involves bodypaint and one and a half naked boobs. Also, don’t click through to Skoopy at work. Content aside, it has dating and girlie ads in the margins. Will the new “Digg socialism” discourage participation? One of the holy grails of the Internet is the secret to user participation. What makes people participate in online communities and who are the most active participants (and most importantly, how do we market to them/get them to shill for us/make money from them)? Are people discouraged from participating when they feel like the system is locked up by a few elites? Or will artificial efforts to level the playing field discourage the “power users” and sap the energy of the whole community? (P.S. “Power users” are the new 18-34-year-olds, pass it on.) What is Will talking about? A beginner’s guide to Digg. Speaking of the hunt for the next big thing, one manifestation of the effort to bridge the gap between your computer and the Internet is widgets. We’ve got one on our Politics page (third item on the right under the ad) but I’m wondering if many people know what it is or how to use it. The Vloggies were this weekend. There’s lot of coverage of the video blog awards, but I like this link for the photos. Dave Sifry has a new State of the Blogosphere report. Gays vs. Environmentalists, Lesbian Seagulls vs. Al Gore: Liberals rally against science In short: If homosexuality was caused by pollution in the environment, how would that change the political landscape? Apparently some are making that very claim. [...]

By: met

met — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 00:19:40 +0000

Maybe Fox understands that Google intends to be the monopoly in media distribution and ad realty. If Fox allows that to happen they’ll be out of business?
Why else is Microsoft releasing Zune ? (because of iPod? pfffttt…)

By: Sam Sethi

Sam Sethi — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 00:06:56 +0000

Firstly there is a universal widget platform and it comes from http://beta.snipperoo.com here in the UK. Oddly in their FAQ they talk about not supporting MySpace because …

“MySpace, along with a bunch of other ’social networks’ don’t allow javascript to run in their systems. We decided that even if we made a widget that would run in MySpace and the other sites, lots of the widgets in the world wouldn’t – and then we would have to impose some sort of filtering and we’d no longer be the universal widget”

In the future when widgets become intelligent agents in the semantic web world we are moving towards then they will become very useful. Until then most of them are pointless iconic furniture cluttering up the desktop.

Have a look at the W3C rules engine work. http://www.w3.o...ules/wg/charter which gives a hint of where widgets with XHTML2, CCS and Javascript might take us.

By: Scott Matthews (Bitty Browser)

Scott Matthews (Bitty Browser) — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 23:49:39 +0000

fwiw, Bitty Browser works with Google, Live.com, Netvibes, TypePad, Pageflakes, Widgetbox, YouOS, EyeOS, AOL's AIM Pages, WordPress, etc. (as well as other sites via an HTML copy/paste). And Vista should generally enable Live.com gadgets on the desktop... -Scott

By: Ryan Turner

Ryan Turner — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 23:42:24 +0000

The ability to put these widgets on any websites in the same way that YouTube videos can be put on any site is powerful and useful!

By: lawrence coburn

lawrence coburn — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 22:31:29 +0000

This is what’s on my mind following this announcement:

- will Spring Widgets see a higher MySpace adoption than independent widgets?
- will Fox’s vetting of developer widgets allow trusted third party providers to get javascript widgets into myspace?
- is this step one to MySpace marginalizing any widget that does not go through their Spring Widgets platform?

Fox oversees the vast majority of the Web’s widget consumption. The fact that they are getting into the distribution of those widgets is a huge story.

By: Jonathan Cohen

Jonathan Cohen — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 21:56:49 +0000

The real drawback is the limited number of widgets at launch, and the lack of keyboard shortcuts. Otherwise, this could be an interesting contender, especially with the baked-in support for MySpace, Xanga, Hi-8, and the like.

By: dailywireless.org » Widgets Live

dailywireless.org » Widgets Live — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 19:32:32 +0000

[...] Widgets Live (schedulee) is the first GigaOM conference, in San Francisco. Michael Arrington says Widgets are popping up all over. [...]

By: John

John — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 18:51:04 +0000

Sounds like Adobe Apollo…

http://labs.ado...ndex.php/Apollo

Its not so much about the technology but its about the toolsets and people available to create unique applications and content on the technology.

It’ll be an interesting few years. The ability to easily leverage Flex development into desktop Apollo applications as well as have web and local versions of them in a cross-platform context (Windows/Mac/Linux) is extremely powerful.

By: StickiWidgets » Blog Archive » SpringWidgets by Fox Interactive Media

StickiWidgets » Blog Archive » SpringWidgets by Fox Interactive Media — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 18:34:01 +0000

[...] Saw a post over a TechCrunch about Fox Interactive Media’s SpringWidgets so we went to check it out. This offering is interesting. While there are plenty of other widgets platforms out there, Michael Arrington points out that SpringWidgets is currently the only one that is bridging the gap and targeting both the desktop and web. [...]