StickiWidgets

Amazon has always had widgets of sorts with their ad placement tools. However, they have recently released a slew of new widgets that aims to generate more means to grab market share for themselves. There are currently 16 widgets available from Amazon. Check out their widgets page for the full list and to get your own Amazon widget.

The first thing they did right was allowing both affiliates and non-affiliates to use the widgets. Obviously if you are an affiliate you will benefit from that and if not, then you still get the benefit of added content. The variety of widgets driven off the Amazon product inventory range from videos, slideshows, favorites, wish lists to product links. Most site owners and bloggers should be able to find at least one that fits in well with their site content. The product catalog with reviews and ratings is a nice value add for just about any site. Couple that with the affiliate program and it’s an easy decision. We just have to wait to see how well the widgets and affiliate program performs.

Each widget has a nice set of configuration settings. You can set the size, color, product category, among others. The configuration pages are pretty well designed, easy to use and the final step provides code or auto inject into a handful of sites. Overall, it’s nicely done.

There are some things we would have liked to see. The ability to generate and grab a widget from the widget itself would be nice. For example, the Wish List widget (our version) would have been a good candidate for this. Understandably, this would not apply to every widget offered by Amazon.

While the system and widgets are a pretty good start, there are a few kinks here and there. Minor things like, when you look up a wish list by email address you are presented with multiple wish lists, but the lists are displayed with the owner’s name rather than the list name. So, you end up with John Doe, John Doe, John Doe, etc. and having to click through to actually know what list is what.

The Amazon widgets, while not perfect, are worth checking out.

Our good friends over at Clearspring are helping organize a WidgetDevCamp in Washington D.C. Unfortunately, our schedule does not allow us to participate. That shouldn’t stop anyone else though…

WidgetDevCamp is a DevCamp-style event in Washington DC for anyone interested in Widget and modular app development.

It will be a chance for discussion, learning and some collaborative widget hacking. Come and share information on the latest topics in widget development, and see what kinds of prototypes can be built with a group of smart folks together in one place for a day or two. Did you have fun at BarCamp DC? WidgetDevCamp should be fun too.

Designers, developers, product marketers — anyone interested in the potential of widgets and other distributed applications (including Facebook) — come on out!

The event is currently still in the planning stages, but it’s slated for a weekend in late October around the Metro D.C. area. For more information, check out the WidgetDevCamp Wiki.

Lawrence Coburn of Sexy Widget/RateItAll.com has an interesting summary of Sep Kamvar’s presentation on Google Gadgets/iGoogle at e.day yesterday. Head over to Sexy Widget for the full post.

Here are a couple of bullets and a comment from Lawrence.

• Sep talked about it as a virtuous circle - more gadgets attract more users, and more users attract more gadgets.
• He talked about the evolution as being: 1) hobbyists developing gadgets for their friends; 2) businesses developing gadgets for commercial reasons; 3) an economy rising around the development and consumption of gadgets complete with acquisitions and companies whose sole focus is Google Gadgets (Lab Pixies)

It sounds like Google is working on more ways to put Gadgets in front of people… with all the Facebook buzz, it’s easy to forget about Google Gadgets. Maybe we shouldn’t. - Lawrence Coburn

Lawrence himself was also a presenter at e.day. He has posted the presentation on his blog, Sexy Widget. It’s a great presentation on widget strategies, so go check it out. We are honored to have received a mention in the presentation. Thanks, Lawrence…