StickiWidgets

It’s been a long while since we have played around with Widgetbox, but we recently ran into a site where Widgetbox was one of two whitelisted widget platforms so we re-visited their offerings.

The feature that was of interest to us was the hosted HTML and JavaScript widgets. We were trying to put an exiting widget on a page where the source site was not on the destination site’s whitelist. Rather than recreate the widget, for a variety of reasons, we just wanted to wrap the widget using Widgetbox (since Widgetbox was whitelisted).

From Widgetbox:

Type in HTML and JavaScript that Widgetbox will serve up. Take advantage of Widgetbox’s configuration system to let users configure the widget.

This was perfect for what we wanted to do. We grabbed the embed code of the intended widget and pasted into the Widgetbox creation tool. This is where the Widgetbox hosted solution shines a little and was a nice surprise. They have created a method for you to replace sections of the code and inject param values based on user input at time of widget configuration. What this means is that, not only did we get to wrap the widget for our own use, but it also enabled others to grab either a copy of our widget or input their own id and get their own user specific widget.

Since they are one of the big players in this space, they are likely to be whitelisted by most destination sites. The limiting factor here is that it is a JavaScript hosted solution so this will not work on some of the major social network sites. Of course, this also means that this could easily be abused.

Another thing that we noticed was that when you embed a widget, Widgetbox auto creates a widget panel. What this does is allow users to add new widgets to the destination site through the Widgetbox panel management system rather than embedding code again on the destination.

Overall, Widgetbox has a nice implementation that is easy to use. They are definitely one of the leaders in this space and we will need to check in on them more often.

From CollegeHumor.com

Internet Commenter Business Meeting

This is what happens when corporations change pwn3rship.

From TheOnion.com

Viewer Voices: Where We Respond To The Opinions Of Our Uninformed Viewers

The Onion News Network’s Brandon Armstrong responds to viewers’ emails, texts, and chats–no matter how inane.

Viewer Voices: Where We Respond To The Opinions Of Our Uninformed Viewers

[via TechCrunch]

Hooman over at Widgify is conducting a widget survey asking “What is most important type of service to you as a Widget Developer?” Both Hooman and Clearspring are very receptive to feedback from the community and widget developers, so head over to Widgify and voice your opinion.

As a side note, the provider of the poll widget needs to remove the registration requirement for people to copy and distribute an existing poll. We would have included the actual poll widget here, but stopped short of registering on vizu.com due to the requirement. Again, this is a sure way to kill off the viral distribution of widgets. Ivan of Snipperoo Blog concurs and adds a couple of additional points.