StickiWidgets

Quality stock photos are hard to find and cost money. That is, until now…

PicApp.com is a service that states on their about page, “Add the best stock photos to your blog “for free!” Off course, it’s not “completely” free. You will have to give up some real estate for ads served along with the photos. It’s up to each individual person do decide if it’s worth it or not, but in our opinion it’s a pretty good compromise.

We like the “animated” version of their photo widget a bit better. The reason is that the ad is hidden after the initial load. Their classic widget displays the ad at all times and takes up more room. Both versions are embed below so you can see what we mean.

PicApp is pretty simple to use. However, the site seems a bit slow and the library of photos is currently lacking. They are a new company so we fully expect these issues to be resolved quickly.

Now, if this were a post about beach volleyball and in particular Kerri Walsh hitting against Elaine Youngs, you can see how PicApp can bring life and a lot of value to the post. And, it didn’t cost us a dime.

“Animated”

Image details: AVP San Francisco Best of the Beach Open served by picapp.com

“Classic”

Image details: AVP San Francisco Best of the Beach Open served by picapp.com

Anyone who’s into sports knows how hard it is to get good free stats. The average person can’t collect the stats themselves and spends way too much time visiting various sports sites to get the information they want. Let’s not even talk about paying for that data.

StatSheet.com is a site that provides a slew of college basketball stats for free. We’re not sure where they are getting the data. But, from the looks of the footer, it is at least partially from STATS. Sports stats data is a big industry and regardless whoever is providing the data, you can bet StatSheet.com will not be providing any free stats data APIs. However, it looks they can and do provide charts (chartlets). This is not to be unexpected, it’s expensive and time consuming to collect sports stats. Data providers have to limit what their clients/partners can do and how data is subsequently distributed.

The chartlets and boxscore widgets are more than sufficient for your “average” (read non-developer) sports nut and blogger. There is a wide range of charts to choose from and type of data and comparisons. You can really add value to your blog or personal page/site with the chartlets. But, your options and locations will be limited as it appears that currently all StatSheet.com chartlets and widgets are either JavaScript or iFrame based. This problem will diminish as social networks and sites begin to open up their platforms.

This model has its obvious pros and cons. We are referring to the chartlets and boxscore widgets and not the entire StatSheet.com site as a whole. Since we are a widget focused blog, we are only reviewing that aspect of their service.

The biggest pro is that it’s free. StatSheet.com does a good job of creating chartlets and boxscore widgets. The amount and diversity of stats is just plain awesome. Or as they put it, “The most comprehensive college basketball stats on the web.”

However, there are a couple cons. The chartlets and boxscores, since we can’t create our own directly from data feeds, need to be more customizable. Features like size, colors, etc. would have been good. We also felt that it was difficult to get a specific chart. You have to navigate to a page on the site with the chart you want to grab the code. At least that’s the only way we knew how, after a short stint on the site. A basic chartlet building tool/page where you can select the chart type, teams, stats, size and colors would have been great. Cut out the whole process of searching through the site for what you are trying to get.

Overall, StatSheet.com is a great site for college basketball fanatics. There are all the stats you could ever want, all in one place. The chartlets and widgets are in their early stages and could use some work but it is a good start and there’s definitely a market for it.

Here are a couple of examples:

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]