StickiWidgets

Derek over at Widgets Lab reminded us that we never officially announced the release of our Search Widget based on the Google AJAX Search API. The original idea was taken from the AnswerTips Widget and spawned from these posts (#1 and #2).

Go to the StickiWidgets Search Widget permanent page for more details and installation instructions.

Here is a quick summary.

• multiple word select (phrases)
• single word select
• default searches (Google AJAX Search API)
  • Google Web Search
  • Dictionary.com Definitions
  • WikiPedia English
  • Answers.com
• to activate: highlight text then press q

A slightly more integrated version of the widget is enabled on this site. Highlight any text and press q to try it out.

There is obviously more work that can be done so comments and feedback are always welcomed.

A YouTube case study was published a couple of days ago on Startup Review. It’s pretty well written. Much of the information is already well known and covered thoroughly. But, it’s still worth a quick read. The thing we like to point out is that they give credit to the YouTube video embed widget and its viral marketing impact as one of the key factors in YouTube’s success.

Viral customer growth due to widget marketing

YouTube allowed users to easily embed any hosted videos on web pages or blogs. This turned out to be particularly popular with social-networking websites, especially MySpace. The inbound links from these ‘widgets’ also helped YouTube increase its page rank on Google, thereby driving traffic via natural search..

The widget was obviously not the only reason for YouTube’s success, but it’s nice to have people acknowledge widgets when appropriate.

[via Snipperoo Blog]

Update (2007.04.30): inCircles will now be Pladeo. You will need to update your embed codes to http://www.pladeo.com/ or go to the site and generate new code.

This chat is a hosted Flash chat solution by inCircles.com and it is currently in Alpha release. Obtaining the embed code is a simple 2 step process. Configure a few basic items (provide an email address) and then enter your site URL to generate the code. It doesn’t get much easier than that. It seems to work pretty well.

There is an interesting feature along the top. It provides a list of popular pages in the inCircles network. While this is a good tool to expose users to new sites, it would have been nice to have the option to disable that or at the very least have a recommendation/relevance engine driving it. We’re not sure that it adds any value in its current state and may actually deter people from using this chat. Why would we promote other non-relevant sites?

Discovered this over at Widgets Lab.