We discovered 3 impressive new widgets today, from Google, Blinkx and 30 Boxes, and we decided to write about all of them in one post. Widgets are the non-developer’s “small pieces loosely joined,” they are the hottest example right now of data portability on the web. They are fun and useful.
Everyone’s got a “widget strategy.” There are widget marketplaces (see WidgetBox, LabPixies and Wigipedia), widget blogs (see WidgetsLab and Widgetoko). There was a whole conference on widgets earlier this month.
Perhaps this post is just us trying to get it out of our system once and for all – but in all likelihood widgets are here to stay. They provide a lot of functionality to website publishers. Widgets are in their infancy, though, and we’re all still learning how to best use them. After this I promise to never embed 3 widgets in one blog post again.
Blinkx Wall
Audio and video search engine Blinkx now lets website publishers place a wall of search result previews on any site using a widget. The Wall below displays search results for the phrase Net Neutrality. Give it a chance to load, it’s way too slow, hopefully that can be improved. The display is fed by RSS – so its contents will change as new search results become available. It could be over the top, but the size and number of nodes in the wall can be changed – this is the “tiny” version. I’ve used Blinkx feeds in the past to create, for example, a page listing the most recent audio and video news about Zimbabwe. This Blinkx Wall is a much more interesting way to display search results. The down side of this is that search results often include video that’s been removed for copyright reasons – video producers certainly wouldn’t want search driving viewers to their work (albeit on other sites). We found out about this widget at Beet.TV, one of the best places to learn about video online.
Two more widgets, from Google and 30 Boxes, after the fold.
30 Boxed
The always innovative online calendar company 30 Boxes has released a very sharp looking calendar mashup tool that anyone can use to display RSS feeds and iCal data in an embedded calendar. Called 30 Boxed, it displays items organized by date on a calendar. You don’t have to have a 30 Boxes account to use the tool, but this will probably be great promotion for the company’s services.
You can combine multiple RSS feeds, including those for images on sites like Flickr. This could be used to push calendar updates or chronicle events and phenomena. For simplicity’s sake, the example below is displaying a single feed – photos tagged “Facebook” in Flickr.
Searchable Google Map
The Google Maps API team released a new widget this afternoon – a very simple, searchable, embedded map and wizard. In the example below, we started at the location of tomorrow night’s TechCrunch 8 party in NYC. The widget wizard for this one automatically creates a Google Map API Key for your website, but you may want to check the Terms of Service before using this one extensively.
Try some searches in the search box. This took about 2 minutes to add to this post with the help of the Wizard. For a different take on map widgets, see also Platial’s new MapKit.
What’s Close to the TechCrunch Party?
I search for Chelsea Park, which is next to your party, and the results took me somewhere else.
Yeah, searching for things other than businesses only works so well on any implementation of G Maps. Did you see the little green buttons you can click to scroll through the results?
The little green buttons are not Intuitive – and are fairly slow as they have to refresh the maps underneath, I would prefer to see it as just text and then can choose when i have the correct one and then display the map.
Google maps is often fairly slow when used in Australia as I dont think they cache the data locally . . . yet
I am really impressed by the Blinx widget – so impressed, in fact, that I’m going to see if I can implement it into my blog. It looks like a great and creative – not to mention visually appealing – way of providing your users with a set of innovative links for additional information on a given topic.
Definitely a thumbs-up from me – now let’s see how I can integrate it….
I love widgets! Widgets are more than a fad. They are a way to reduce information overload on the Internet and in such a way that they stimulate the right side of the brain. Widgets enable us to see both the big picture and details. Dare I predict that widgets will become the currency and mini-portals of the Internet?
The majority of future homepages on the Internet, including those of the big companies, will be startpages that are full of widgets. The widget explosion has just begun. The next big thing is really small!
Best regards,
Rod.
Widgetlab.com – yeah, right ‘Coming Soon!’ nothing there.
Real widget bloggers:
Flying Seeds – http://flyingseeds.com
Widgify – http://www.widgify.com/
and of course Snipperoo blog – http://blog.snipperoo.com
and the Widget Directory with over 2000 widgets in it:
http://directory.snipperoo.com
We just launched 3 widgets on our advice too. However, these are more like tools that you can use if you have a blog, instead of just supplying information.
One shows your visitors the advice you give, and gives them a chance to ask you for new advice, another widget shows the things you’re interested in, then users can ask you a question based on any of your interests, and finally, there’s a widget that shows the last few questions you asked, so you can always get more diverse answers visiting your site/blog.
Funadvice Widgets
Funadvice.com is a Q&A site competing with Yahoo Answers, Answerbag and Yedda.
Some pretty sweet widgets, though widgets are only new in terminology, not in actuality. People have been pushing widgets on webmasters since the beginning of time – though primitive, things like search boxes, news feeds, are old news.
Marshall, were you attempting to link to me or is “Widgetlab” (Coming soon) the actual site you wanted to link to?
http://www.widgetslab.com/
“D”
Rod – check out http://www.yourminis.com – its a homepage of widgets that you talk about….
Very useful tools.
Imagine the bandwidth all these widgets hog! – Must be good news for Akamai and Limelight folks!!
On a seroius note, it looks like Goog is integrating skype with Goog Maps (look here)
Mike – Any *insider info*?
i am trying 30 boxes and experiencing some problems with my own RSS feeds but in essence it seems a potentially excellent module; hopefully when out of Beta all will be OK. however, it does make me wonder what the Yahoo/360 team actually ‘do’ – the calendar within 360 has had many of these features for an age yet they don’t seem to promote it or encourage its use externally. I am a big Yahoo fan and adopted Yahoo so early my own email address is ‘carlg@yahoo.com’ but I am concerned at their lack of cohesion in recent times … as with Google there seems to be a lack of product ideas and a dearth of accountability/deliverables – i mean, how long has 360 been in Beta, now!?
I would like to clarify my comment at No.6 above and apologise to Derek at widgetslab.com
My bad – I must have typed widgetlab.com (without the ’s’) and, totally forgetting Derek’s excellent blog in a moment of madness, I wrote a snarky comment because there wasn’t anything there.
Well, I’ll learn my lesson. http://www.widgetslab.com is actually a brilliant widgets blog. And I’m a monkey’s uncle.
Haha, that picture for Nov. 7th in 30 boxed outside of facebook is me. =)
Thanks for the heads-up on these new embeddable web widgets. For OS X users, you’ll be able to add these to your Dashboard using the next release (.90b) of our free Amnesty Generator product.
Hey, you might want to double-check that Palatial thingy.
It’s really just google maps, and they allow users to add data points.
They also add advertising, which I thought was against the google TOS??
@ 10: Alex
Thanks for pointing me to the “yourminis” webpage. I’d already looked at the page and was very impressed with the product. I had therefore wasted no time in making http://www.yourminis.com my homepage.
Once again, thanks.
And best regards,
Rod.
I checked out the calendar widget from 30 Boxed and it looks pretty darn good and useful. Looking for ways to incorporate the calendar widget on my site. Thanks for sharing!