Written by Groucho on June 30, 2008 under Software
If you think widgets are simply made for impressing people, guess again. These technological innovations are likewise marketing tools in play today especially for business ventures that use the web as its alternative resource in operations. Widgets development is one thing but placement in proper channels is another. Placement for distribution will carry with it additional costs and while we tend to ignore this side of widgets, they are profitable for the developers if you think of it.
You can just imagine the number of people who will download and install widgets these days. Acting as a medium towards bringing updates and applications right on the very desktop of their patrons, their engagement fee alone can exhaust an advertiser’s budget. So you can just imagine the amount to invest in widget technology, all for the sake of making right business online.
Taking it as a business perspective with strategic directives, widgets are indeed something that can be similar to common marketing channels we use today. Advertising will always have its budget allocation but when you talk about web advertising, it is entirely different.
Advanced investments in widgets today are expected to pay off in the end. There will always be finance risks towards advertising and promotional activities. But if the returns offer a lucrative return, then why not? Just consider the number of users who go online today. Make a ratio on the probability of penetrating these millions of audiences and you may end up considering this investment as peanuts compared to what you can look forward to as far as revenue generation is concerned.
“Everyone has their hand out for payment along the way and it can be a real drag on a campaign,” said Daniel Taylor, senior analyst of digital advertising at The Yankee Group, Boston. Debra Aho Williamson, senior analyst at eMarketer, echoed Taylor’s sentiment: “When I look at the widget marketplace, I think back to the days of the Web when Web developers had their hands out for everything too.”
Marketers are projected to spend $40 million this year, up from $15 million last year, toward creating, promoting and distributing widgets, per eMarketer, New York. That figure represents about 2.5% of the $1.6 billion expected for U.S. social network ad spending, up from 1.6% of the $920 million spent on social network advertising last year.
Written by Groucho on June 30, 2008 under Software
For sure, a lot of us have our own preference of web services and widgets are there to make it all the more easier for us. For the avid Yahoo users, this new Yahoo widget engine that can be downloaded for free is certainly a must have. Customizable and having 22 default widgets to go with the Yahoo widget engine package, people can stay abreast with all the updates and latest happenings online rather than opening a browser and searching for them individually.
What makes the Yahoo widget great to use is the fact that it is easy to use. Equipped with a helpful tour for the new users who want to make use of new technology, this new Widget Engine is bound to help the new enhancements and further bolster the basic knowledge of people when it comes to the beauty of widget technology today.
The app has 22 default widgets, including a weather forecaster, a Yahoo Mail manager, a Wi-Fi signal checker, a calendar, and an iTunes remote. Though the true value of the app should be judged on the quality of the widgets developed, the platform itself is polished and easy to use.
A helpful tour introduces users to the basics of widgets, offering up some examples. Adding and removing widgets is simple, and the new widget dock features more personalization options. Most widgets include tweaks such as skinning options. Other new improvements include ALT+Tab menu access and helpful configuration buttons that appear when you mouse over a widget. Yahoo Widgets does insert itself into your start-up programs without asking, but that can be fixed in Preferences. It’s an excellent tool for users of any of Yahoo’s services.
Written by Groucho on June 28, 2008 under Software
Widget technology can be done and acquired in various ways and the best thing about them is you can build your very own widget with the right software. In this case, the Sprout builder is a good software to consider if you are inclined to create great widgets that have become a growing demand today.
You can integrate audio, images and video through Sprout Builder which is flexible as well. One thing that most people hate is the technical nature which seems difficult to understand at first if you don’t get your hand on it. But once you start building widgets in the right direction, you would be surprised at the ease and the uniqueness of widgets that you create once you start.
Ideally you would need guides and tutorials to make it work. Widget technology is something that is really ideal for most people today, especially people who want an easier route towards the net. It can likewise be used as a good tool for representation in desktops and websites and all that is needed is to learn the proper way of developing great widgets according to your taste and needs.
There are a growing number of online widget makers now available, but the one service I keep going back to is Sprout Builder. It’s easy to use but still quite powerful and flexible in what it offers.
Written by Groucho on June 26, 2008 under Software
Widgets are the new way of enhancing online marketing these days and apparently these tools allow a certain site to be able to keep subscribers up to date each time there is something new unleashed by this group. Normally pushed as a matter of convenience, allowing potential visitors the luxury of simply starting up and just checking out a certain widget takes out the need to surf or log on to the site which may or may not frequently update their site.
On the part of a company, these are indeed handy marketing plan tools. Customers want an easier life and through widgets, they can be able to turn on their PC and see if there is indeed something new. It brings a sense of networking in a sense considering that the more people who use a particular widget, the better it is for any company. It only shows how many people are interested in a particular site and its offerings and closely monitoring activities to make sure that they are kept abreast with any developments once the site administrator does so.
This new dimension of broadening the marketing perspective can be categorized on the technological external forces available on the web today. People appreciate technology and integrating them into marketing plans will definitely be a welcome note. Other than trying to impress anybody, widgets used as a marketing tool does help broaden the perspective. Eventually, most companies who invest in online exposure will follow suit as well.
Written by Groucho on June 23, 2008 under Software
Widgets have been known to help optimize and provide varied solutions for people and groups and apparently the Telegraph has joined the fray. Providing various videos on its sight that may be rendered useless unless they are properly channeled for distribution will go for naught and thanks to widget technology, they can now be made available in websites around the Internet.
Facebook, MySpace and other websites that are geared towards making a difference and establishing their rankings on the world wide web can be used as mediums towards racking in traffic and making videos on their website transmitted and scene with the widgets they have offered. We all know that videos are the new craze for most people today and with this option available, expect a lot of sites to bite the offering so that they have something to show towards for their many readers.
In a way, this is another form of drawing in the crowd and making resources available for people who want video feeds and files maximized accordingly. Apparently most people today are very much appreciative with videos made available and now that Telegraph has joined the long list of videos online, competition for great content over the web just got broader.
The Telegraph has developed and launched a series of widgets to virally distribute its online video content to social networks, blogs and across mobile devices.
The Telegraph TV widgets, which are compatible with 26 different networks and websites, will be made available for users to place on profile pages on Facebook and MySpace, as well as on blogs, desktops and iGoogle homepages.
Written by Groucho on June 19, 2008 under Software
Here is a cool widget for people who love music and are forever looking for quality music downloads. You don’t have to search for them online anymore. You can simply get a Muzicons widget, placed it on your blog and you can instantly find the preferred musical tunes right from your very own desktop.
It is easily customizable and caters to most blogging software known today. It can be placed in blog sites hosted by Wordpress, Blogger, LiveJournal or even MySpace. You can even present them through the various emoticons to set the mood of your choice each time you leave it on your blog.
So if you want something cool to put on your blog, try this Muzicons widgets. They are sure to liven up your blog and even give your visitors something else to do when they are finished reading your blogs.
Muzicons may seem ordinary, but they’re David against the Goliath that is the music industry. Since Muzicons was created in Russia, it will not have to adhere to the demands of the DMCA as we saw happen with Imeem when it was sued by Warner Music. Users are free to upload copyrighted music as they see fit.
In my opinion, Muzicons are simply the cutest music widgets I have ever seen.
Written by Groucho on June 16, 2008 under Software
Widgets have had their share of boosting online advertising and for WidgetBucks, the market leading ad network of retail and shopping widgets for online publishers, getting additional funding thanks to investing partners such as Draper Fisher Juvertson is certainly a big boost for expanding and putting where the money is.
DFJ has been known to invest wisely in companies that bring unique and disruptive technology. These investments for potential business undertaking that can change investments into fortunes is indeed something many would consider a gamble. But considering that WidgetBucks has initially had 100 million unique visitors and serves over 20,000 publishers, you have to wonder the things that can still occur for the coming years. And from all indications, WidgetBucks is not yet through and is in fact planning major moves that will further bolster its established popularity and strengthen its ecommerce platform in the process.
“The investment decision was simple,” said Bryant. “DFJ invests in companies that are bringing disruptive technology to major sectors of the Internet economy. We love what WidgetBucks has built around its ecommerce platform. While the recent growth has been phenomenal, what we invested in is the promise to truly transform performance-based advertising for publishers.”
So if you see WidgetBucks CEO Matt Hullet flashing a wide smile these days, don’t be surprised. Things are looking up for WidgetBucks and with the new investments, they are bound to go places.
More online shopping with more customers who believe in WidgetBucks, you just got to expect better things ahead for this market leading ad network of retail and shopping widgets for online publishers.
Written by Groucho on June 14, 2008 under Software
We all know that widgets have made life a lot easier for us but it still remains that we have to choose the widgets we choose and where we get them. Facebook, fast growing and becoming one of daily tasks that people would want to look into when they get to log on to the web has a number of widgets which you can place on the left side of your profile. With all the programs that Facebook offers, you can imagine at the number of Facebook widgets you can put. But other than overdoing it, there are reportedly privacy risks you may want to check out which can do more harm than entertainment for you.
“Everything requires you to give access to personal information or it forces you to ask your friends to do the same—it becomes a real nuisance,” said David Dixon, 40, an information technology consultant who recently deleted most of the applications he had downloaded to his Facebook profile after reading on a blog that developers may have access to his information. “Why does a Sudoku puzzle have to know I have two kids? Why does a postcard need to know where I went to college?”
Indeed this quote has a lot to desire. The relation of accessing personal information for some form of entertainment and recreation for a social networking site will certainly seem annoying. If you are a Facebook user, you have to wonder if these widgets were developed on purpose or not.
But if you are a seasoned programmer for these widgets, you should know beforehand. Programming will always have something hidden and apparently this has been one thing that is revealed and may work against this large social networking site famous today.
Written by Groucho on June 12, 2008 under Software
The power of widgets is pretty obvious and with technology making things and loose ends meet, looking for the best software to create your own widget has likewise been something most online experts are looking for.
iWidgets has given this need much thought and has introduced a new way to help people adhere this need. Widgets are key experts towards helping build and strengthen networks onto social marketing sites and portals but the main agenda is to be able to create and design widgets that can do that exact purpose for them.
The demand is evident and the attention and focus for such widgets today has been a growing need. It has indeed helped a lot and for most widget enthusiasts, this is another step towards improving site optimization and awareness which is surely something that most web developers are gearing for.
“Private beta users were so enthusiastic about iWidgets, we knew the market was ready,” said Peter Yared, CEO of iWidgets. “Our robust tools provide an unmatched ability to display personalized content from a source website without requiring experienced programmers. The result is incredibly viral – a fun, interactive application people want to use and share.”
Traffic is something sacred and for most web developers, they will go at anything to make it happen. Widgets have been around but the real value of using one has yet to be realized. But now that they have been acknowledged as one of the main traffic generators, iWidget just made things practical and easier for people wanting much longed for traffic today.
If you are into blogging, you will note that in the design portion of the Wordpress administration (assuming you are using WordPress as your blogging platform) the ease of playing around with the format of your site. Normally they are placed at the bottom of the page to which you can drag and drop them as you please to the desired order of what will be seen each time a visitor visits your blog.
The usual widgets you will see include the categories, recent posts, date, tag clouds, and recent comments for default widgets you will always have. While there are certain orders on how to place them, you can tinker with that a bit and drag the corresponding widget/s to the order you prefer.
When you talk about preferred order, this is thinking like a visitor. In cases where a visitor would like the post you made, chances are he will be looking for others of the same category or similar pages. He may even prefer to look at the tag cloud to which a simple click can return the pages that he would want to see.
So if you look at it, widgets are easier to navigate with compared to the usual programming that the old WordPress scripts had initially used. Instead of getting worried at potential errors in the scripting methodology is concerned, you can rely on the WordPress widgets to do the pre-formatting for you without any worries at all. Just don’t forget to save them after you are done so that you can finally get the right order of widgets for your site.
Widgets are those little tools or gadgets that can either clutter up online interfaces, or give little tidbits of information that are very accessible at a glance. Widgets have also become popular in the new media world, with various add-ons and plugins that let users manipulate their blogs and websites with drag-and-drop ease.
The Widgets Blog aims to explore how these little, trivial pieces of software can help us become more productive, and how we can maximize the use of widgets in our everyday lives. (Read more about Widgets Blog...)
