The 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver are well underway and it’s been a great games. In fact, the US Olympics Team has been amazing so far. From Shaun White’s double McTwist 1260 on this victory lap to Lindsey Vonn’s first ever USA Gold in the Women’s downhill on a bruised shin to the USA Men’s 5-3 win over Canada in hockey. These are just a few of the highlights as USA currently holds the top spot with 24 overall medals.
We love the Olympics for the sports, competition and spirit of the games. If you can’t get enough of it on TV, here are three widgets to keep you updated online.
Team USA has been promoting their athletes and the upcoming 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver with a couple of widgets. With the games just 8 days away, we thought we should take a closer look at the widgets.
The widgets themselves are pretty straight forward. The 2 widgets are essentially the same widget in 2 sizes. Both widgets are 300 pixels wide with one being a standard IAB 300×250 pixels. In each widget you get video and athlete content along side a twitter feed. The twitter feed is a nice touch as it gives the widget fresh content more quickly and engages the visitors in the conversation.
As standard practice, you can share this widget and this is where the widget gets interesting for us. Now that Clearspring has announce the end of their Launchpad platform in favor of the AddThis product, a few key items have surfaced as a result of the transition to the AddThis sharing platform.
Built-in gadget, app and embed sharing are now gone as they are not currently supported by AddThis. Google gadgets has been replaced with Google Bookmarks, apps were replaced with stream/feed posts and embeds are now up to the widget coders to support on their own. These changes are not necessarily bad, but they were nice features within Launchpad (not to mention a slew of other features but we’ll save that for another post).
So far so good, even with the loss of the Google Gadgets and Facebook/MySpace Apps.
The stage is set for the NFL Pro Bowl and Super Bowl Sundays. Get this widget to keep up-to-date with the latest news in the NFL heading into the Pro Bowl and the Super Bowl games.
This widget comes equipped with a game countdown, news headlines, roster and twitter feed. You can also “Grab” your own copy, powered by gigya.
Pro Bowl – Sun, Jan 31st @ 7:30 PM ET. on NBC
Super Bowl – Sun, Feb 7th @ 6:00 PM ET. on CBS
Find out how your country are faring in FIFA World Cup qualifiers, by reading the latest news, seeing their latest fixtures and results and also where they stand in their group.
Click “ADD WIDGET+” to select your team and to get your own widget.
Our March Madness Widget for the 2009 NCAA Tournament Bracket has been updated for the 2009 Tourney. Again, it was built for personal use so it’s pretty limited. The bracket currently updates every 60 seconds so it’s a good way to keep up to date with the scores.
The current default view is the EAST Region. However, you can select from the EAST, MIDWEST, SOUTH, WEST or ELITE EIGHT brackets as the default view when you grab the widget. If you decide to change he default view later, just grab the code again and select the new view as the default.
Update (2009-12-25): Widget removed due to changes in the Clearspring Platform and lack of interest in this widget.
The 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver are well underway and it’s been a great games. In fact, the US Olympics Team has been amazing so far. From Shaun White’s double McTwist 1260 on this victory lap to Lindsey Vonn’s first ever USA Gold in the Women’s downhill on a bruised shin to the USA Men’s 5-3 win over Canada in hockey. These are just a few of the highlights as USA currently holds the top spot with 24 overall medals. 
