Sticki Widgets

Here’s an interesting press release, we haven’t tested so no comments or review yet.

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NIMBUZZ LAUNCHES FREE IPHONE APPLICATION

Brings free IM buddy calling, landscape mode chat, and massive instant messaging and social network support to iPhone and iPod touch

26 November 08 - Rotterdam - Nimbuzz (www.nimbuzz.com), the most comprehensive mobile Instant Messaging, (geo) presence and VoIP provider launches into the Apple iPhone App Store. The free application lets users call, chat and message, for free, with their friends on virtually all major instant messaging communities and social networks, including Skype, Yahoo! Messenger, Facebook, MySpace, AIM, Windows Live Messenger, Google Talk, ICQ, Jabber, and more.

Specifically for the needs of iPhone users, this will be the first complete messaging product available with landscape mode chat, IM buddy calling (including Yahoo!), and regional social network support – and it is free.

Users turn the product on its side to use a wide keyboard for fast and easy typing. Furthermore, Nimbuzz is the first product to offer IM buddy calling over Wifi to Yahoo! Messenger as well as Google Talk, Skype, and Windows Live Messenger.

Nimbuzz supports chat for local social networks, such as StudiVZ, the biggest German speaking social network, Hyves for The Netherlands, and Gadu-Gadu in Poland.

Nimbuzz is a lifestyle application, designed to meet any communication need and is the only chat application to offer landscape chat and IM buddy calling. The centralized contact list aggregates contacts of the most popular social and IM networks, and offers superior VoIP call quality over Wifi.

Other key updates include Personal Message allowing users to broadcast real-time status updates to all contacts, presence information to see who is online and where, and emoticons for additional expression.

Nimbuzz currently grows at over 10,000 new users per day, with over 10 Million logins per day, and we are happy to welcome iPhone and iPod users to the community.

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Check out the Nimbuzz site and the Nimbuzz blog for more info.

This is not a widget related post. But, in light of some comments regarding our last post on the cheap gas widget, here’s a post on where to find alternative fuel filling stations near you.

We try to be green here and we know many of our readers do too.

So, for those of you interested in green cars and are looking for filling stations to power your green car, check out www.greencar.com and their Alternative Fuel Filling Station tool. BTW, this would be a great tool to widgetize and build an iPhone app for…

The site also has great information regarding electric cars, hybrids, the technologies powering them and more.

Find specific information like MPG and EPA ratings on cars and read articles about them.

Update (Nov 20, 2008): LA Auto Show - 2009 Green Car of the Year Award - VW Jetta Clean Diesel Wins 2009 Green Car of the Year!

[Disclaimer: we have some involvement with www.greencar.com]

Gas prices hitting you in the pocket book? Try out this Gas Price widget by Motor Trend/Automotive.com. We can’t vouch for the accuracy of the data so try at your own risk.

Overall it’s a pretty simple widget. You enter your zip code, radius for search, gas type and sort order. You are then provided with “up-to-date” (as claimed by the widget creators) gas price list for your area and the locations. The widget has the usual links back to the parent site and Clearspring powered sharing tools.

One simple feature that we felt was overlooked is a “Map It” feature. On each of the listings a “Map It” button could link the user to a Google Maps powered page on Automotive.com. This could easily drive more traffic to the site and that map/directions page could be monetized. Leveraging Google Maps or even any other mapping system would be dead simple.

Lastly, we thought the in-widget ad was a good idea but fell a bit short. The ad was just too long; we clocked it at about 5 seconds. By that time a user’s probably glanced at the widget, processed it as an ad and moved on. Shorten it to 3 seconds and you might actually have a chance of transitioning to the widget while the user’s still paying attention to the ad/widget space. Or, at the very least, not cover the entire widget with the ad so that a user knows that there’s something worth waiting for underneath.