In this time of economic uncertainty, more and more people are once again returning to an old habit. That is, the use of coupons to make savings. In the old days, people would regularly buy the newspaper (especially the Sunday edition) so that they can spend a considerable amount of time clipping those coupons which will end up making them savings. Actually, let me correct myself – I think that a lot of people still do this today.

Of course, for those who spend a lot of time online, there is another kind of coupon for them – the electronic version. With this new widget from Fabulous Savings, you can keep track of the most updated coupons even more easily. This widget can be downloaded for free, giving you the latest coupons that you can use when shopping. One good thing about the coupons that you can find from this widget is that they are not limited to food items or grocery items only. You can actually find coupons for most anything under the sun!

Michael Yack, the founder of Fabulous Savings, shares that “this widget is a great resource for all consumers. We wanted to make information easy and valuable. That’s why we decided to offer our National Retailer coupons through our inaugural widget and let everyone save money.”

What stores are participating? There are a lot but here are some of the most popular ones: Target, Macy’s, Best Buy, Toys R Us, and Wal-Mart. I don’t know about you, but I am going to find this widget now.

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When the Samsung Omnia came out, it was touted as one of the iPod killers. At that time, I was pretty skeptical. After all, it is very hard to overcome the hype that Apple products always come with. Months down the road, it seems that the Omnia is living up to the expectations of its fans.

For those of you who have a Samsung Omnia, one of the things that you might have noticed missing is the capability for lotsa widgets. I can imagine how frustrating this could be. I may not have a Samsung Omnia but I do know how cool widgets for mobile phones are and as cool as an Omnia can be, it just doesn’t live up to its potential if it does not have widgets.

So here’s the good news – Samsung has recently released a new ROM, which includes new widgets. The ROM was only released on the 11th of March and is still in the beta version. From what I hear, some of the widgets that are already active include a stocks widget, a news widget, a weather widget, and a Google and Yahoo search widget. There is also a section for “more widgets,” but unfortunately, it is not functional as of yet. And that is why perhaps some people are waiting for the more stable version of the ROM to come out before downloading it. If I had the Omnia, though, I would download the beta version and find out for myself.

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Who doesn’t hate being stuck in the middle of traffic? I know I do. Just last Friday, I found myself wasting about an hour sitting in the car, waiting for Friday night traffic to let up so I could get to my destination. Friday nights is really one of the worst times to go out. Everyone and their moms seems to need to be somewhere in a real hurry and the city streets are just so full of people trying to be ahead of one another.

While widgets will not probably physically get rid of all the cars on the road, having a widget to at least know the conditions on the road will be quite helpful. At least, if you know just how bad the traffic is, you can find an alternative route or stay where you are till the conditions get better.

And that’s what the TomTom HD Traffic Widget can do for you. This Traffic Widget is compatible with some of the most popular sites that we use on a constant basis – Facebook, iGoogle, and Bebo. It offers real time information on traffic. It also offers customization – you can indicate a particular place and monitor the traffic in and around that area. Using this customization feature, the TomTom widget can also calculate the additional time that it will take you to travel from one point to another, based on the current traffic situation. The widget constantly refreshes itself, giving you only the most up to date information.

And the best thing about it? It can be downloaded for free!

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These days, it’s not simply all about attracting people to visit your web site. The idea is to get the information out, to disseminate the information in as easy a way as possible. And that is why widgets have become so popular.

Indeed, their usefulness is highlighted not only by the countless widgets that we use for sports and other pursuits of leisure. In fact, even the United States government has turned to widgets to disseminate information. Take the Center for Disease Control (CDC) for example. They have created a widget that automatically publishes important information regarding critical cases.

It’s not only the CDC that is making use of widgets. The Ohio Attorney General’s Office makes use of Twitter, which has its own widgets that can be placed in web sites.

Mitch Wagner of Information Week recently wrote a feature on this “movement” in the government:

One of the ways that social media changes the Web is that social media require you take your message to the people. The game is no longer about attracting people to your Web site—it’s about bringing your content to Twitter and other people’s Web sites. That’s a lesson that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) put into practice in the recent recall of tainted peanut-butter, and that the Ohio Attorney General is using for home foreclosure information.

I am sure that widget developers are aware of this and that they are scrambling to get the deals to develop widgets for government agencies. On our part, we have more widgets to make use of!

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Got a sports blog? Or maybe you just like sports and you would like to let the rest of the world know about your passion? Whatever your reason may be for liking sports, you can’t get any better than the widgets that ESPN has to offer. I have been seeing a lot of these widgets in my sport-loving friends’ sites but I never really took the time to check the choices out for myself. So I did just that today.

Surprisingly, there are quite a lot of widgets on offer in the ESPN Widget Center. Perhaps the most general and yet useful widget is the ESPN Top Story widget. It is perfect for those who are into anything related to sports. As the name implies, the widget shows various happenings in the world of sports – the hottest and freshest stories only, by the way.

I particularly like basketball, however, so I prefer the NBA Top Story widget. I find it perfect for my needs because I do not have enough time to follow each game and always check up on what is happening in the NBA. This widget can give me a glimpse into the most important news.

There is also the Team Widget – or widgets, rather. You can choose your favorite team and get a widget all about them. Being a San Antonio Spurs fan, I will be getting the code for this widget and adding it to my personal blog NOW. So what are you waiting for? Any sport, any team – you’ll find it in the ESPN Widget Center. I can’t believe it took me this long to discover this!

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What are your plans for tonight? If you are a fan of the day of love, then I suppose that you had made plans weeks ago. If you are like me, though, your idea of a romantic Valentines Day may be limited to a nice steak meal and some Valentines themed posts and widgets. If you are liking the latter idea, then here are a couple of interesting widgets that will help you share the love today.

The I Love You Widget
Scared of actually saying the three words out loud? Why not make the Internet do the work for you? Get the I Love You Widget here and post it wherever you think it should be posted. I was thinking that it would look good in any blog and that it would definitely be perfect for the weekend. It does not really do much – it’s just a bunch of cute letters and a heart floating above the clouds – but if cute is what you’re going for, then this would work perfectly. This widget can be posted in a blog, a web site, your desktop, or even your phone.

Love E-cards
I love e-cards, who doesn’t? They are perfect for any occasion and you get to save some trees while at it! This widget is not new but it is perfect for Valentines weekend. You are sure to get a lot of hits as I can just imagine the large number of people trying to send love e-cards at the last minute.

Happy Valentines!

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Do you know how to create widgets? Is this something that you like doing in your spare time? Are you frustrated with the available widgets in the market and you think that you have a better idea?

If you answered yes to the questions above, then you might want to consider joining Vodafone’s latest stunt – a widget making competition. Vodafone is one of the largest telecommunications company in Europe today and they have launched the competition to invite developers to outdo themselves and each other in creating mobile widgets that just might be the hottest downloads in the near future.

In order to be the winner, you have to wow the judges in several areas: usability, innovation, and value to users. So no cool but hard to use widgets – neither should you create something useful but something “old.” This competition will surely require radical thinking and hip encoding in order for the developers to gain a competitive edge.

Not that there is going to be a lack of entries, I think. What with more and more people using mobile phones which have access to the Internet, the need for a wide array of widgets is even more imminent. I am quite certain, actually, that a lot of ideas have been brewing in countless techie minds across the globe. This competition is only one way of giving them a venue.

Oh, have I mentioned the prize? Up for grabs is £20,000 This is more than enough incentive huh?

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Widget Apps In The Future For Java Mobile I went to the mall yesterday and was overwhelmed by the number of new gadgets on display in all the stores. Everywhere I looked, I saw phones – smart phones galore. I couldn’t help myself – I had to get one and immediately played with it the moment I got home. I am quite happy with it as it is everything. I did notice one thing, though – there seems to be a lack of widgets.

That is why I was quite happy to read about the latest thing that the guys at Java are working on. According to reports, Sun Microsystems, the company behind Java, is working on two specific technologies that are aimed towards the mobile market. This is what Computer World has reported:

Sun Microsystems is readying two technologies to better enable the mobile trend: Java On Device Portal (ODP), for widget applications, and the JavaFX Mobile runtime, due next month as part of the JavaFX rich Internet application platform.

“[ODP] has two primary functions,” said Eric Klein, Sun vice president of Java marketing. “The first function is to make it easier for Java developers to quickly create these small widget applications using a consistent framework, and the second part is an on-device portal that lets that widget appear and be dynamically delivered.”

How long do we have to wait till we actually get our hands on the technology? They are due to unveil JavaFX Mobile in February during the Mobile World Conference. ODP is up and running and they expect some carriers to be offering this in the very near future.

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Widget lovers, hurry on over to Searchles.com because they have just released a new widget. Dubbed the Related Content Widget, it is designed for blogs and web sites and aims to help them become “stickier.” That is, the widget helps to keep users stuck to your site AND also helps you make money while at it!

So what is the Related Content Widget about? Here are some salient points from the Searchles web site itself:

In-Depth Search Technology – The technology behind this widget goes beyond basic tag-matching and text search. There’s no need to even tag your posts! We do the work for you and determine relevancy by spidering your site’s content and analyzing relationships between extracted concepts in order to retrieve the most comprehensive set of relevant posts in your site’s archive.

We could all certainly use this kind of widget – imagine not having to come up with the tags ourselves!

Make Money from Targeted Ad Revenue – Our widget serves in-widget contextual advertising from Snap. Opt-in to set up an account with us and share the ad revenue 50/50.

Fifty-fifty may not seem that good but put that on top of the user friendliness aspect of your blog or web site and you can appreciate its value.

I think my favorite point is this:

Greater Accuracy – We’re going to go ahead and say it. Our accuracy is better than other plugins you will find out there. We have deployed our technology on sites such as the Washington Post and the Denver Post.

Accuracy is everything when it comes to widgets showing related content. If you want to see just how accurate this widget is, check out their blog. Oh did I already mention that this widget is for free?

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HDTVs are the rave these days and in spite of the fact that they fetch very high prices in the market, a lot of people are getting them more and more. As a result, new applications are being developed for them. If you’ve got a Samsung HDTV, you’d be at the edge of your seat to get your hands on this latest widget, which is the result of a partnership between Rallypoint Systems, Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.

Dubbed Internet@TV – Content Service, the new widget focuses on the ultimate fantasy sports experience. The fantasy sports widget will be available for use in all of Samsung’s flat-panel HDTV items released in 2009. The Internet-enabled TV services offered by Rallypoint can be activated at the moment of purchase, or if you have higher EQ and can afford to wait, the services can be activated once the HDTV is installed in your home.

What does the widget do? PR Newswire has the details:

“There are over 20 million active fantasy sports players dying for the killer app on the television. Rallypoint allows them to view real-time sports updates, review player stats, and make player substitutions from their television simply and easily,” said David Adams, VP Business Development at Rallypoint. “Samsung’s Internet@TV – Content Service is an excellent way for these fans to watch and participate in the game at the same time without having to change the channel or use a clunky laptop.”

Dubbed The Ultimate Sports Fan experience, Rallypoint’s TV widgets service will provide detailed sports information, statistics, fantasy draft-style leagues, pick-’em games, brackets, and other popular sports-related games to Samsung flat-panel HDTVs. Rallypoint will provide new widgets and updated player content as each sports season arrives, starting with fantasy league widgets for US professional baseball leagues in April 2009, and then football, baseball, basketball, racing, and soccer throughout 2009 and 2010.

Knowing how sports fans value the best viewing experience on their TVs, this widget is going to be icing on the cake.

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