It’s been a long awaited announcement and it’s finally come. Clearspring has opened The Clearspring Community Platform and it’s free. We’ve had the luck of being part of the preview and it looks great. There are still things to add and some things to tweak but it’s a very polished system. For more information, check out the feature list, documentation, blog and forum.
A few things we really like about the platform. It was easy to add and configure a widget into the system. The interface was clean and stepped you through the process. Once the widget is added the power of the platform begins to show. The “Grab it!” feature allows anyone to easily get or push the widget to numerous web properties and social networks (11 at last count) or you can grab the code itself.
In addition to viral distribution of the widget through the widget, the Clearspring system can also publish the widget to existing widget galleries and start pages; currently Google Gadgets Gallery, Live Gadget Gallery , Netvibes Widget Library and Pageflakes Flake Chooser.
To wrap up all this widget goodness Clearspring tracks and reports on the widgets. This is great to actually be able to know how a widget is performing and where. There are 5 reporting categories and with more detailed reports within each.
- Views: how many times the widget has been viewed
- Unique views: how many individual users viewed the widget
- Locations: where the widget is placed
- Viral hubs: where the widget is being spread from
- Geographic: where in the world are users viewing from
For developers there is also the beginnings of an API. It’s currently very sparse but it’s a good sign to see Clearspring developing an API for their platform.
And… If you’re large (lucky) enough to need an enterprise-class widget platform, there is the Premium Platform to consider.
While it’s not perfect and there a few more things we would like to see, Hooman and his team have done a great job overall and we look forward to more from Clearspring.
Widgify has a couple of posts on start pages becoming widget management systems and allowing export of their widgets outside of their domains. Here are the Widgify posts on Pageflakes and yourminis.
It’s good to see these companies moving in this direction. We took a look at the offerings and noticed one major difference. The Flakes from Pageflakes are exported in HTML code snippets while the minis are Flash widgets. This means that the Flakes will be limited in where they can be used (social networks do not allow this type of code) and the minis can be used just about anywhere (MySpace, Stickam, blogs, etc).
It will be interesting to see where these two companies take this and if other start page companies will follow.
For NBA fans, here is a yourminis scoreboard widget for the NBA. If you don’t like the yourminis widget, there’s always the scoreboard from SpringWidgets.
It’s been a while since we have posted about Pageflakes, an Ajax powered start page. We haven’t had the opportunity to work on additional features for the Stickam Contacts Widget which happens to fit will within a Pageflakes start page, utilizing the web page flake.
Over at TechCrunch, Michael Arrington teases us with information regarding a complete redesign and new features for Pageflakes to be launched in the next couple of days. If this is the case, we may have to revisit the Stickam Contacts widget and see how it fits in with the new Pageflakes design.
Michael mentions the ability to “publish” your page for others to view. Some adjustments will be needed to the contacts widget so that the Stickam contacts list can be viewed by people other than the list creator. However, we are not sure we will make this change or what type of options we will provide. Providing the list to your viewers is one thing but giving them the ability to launch into chat is another. Chances are we will put an option in there to display the list only, without the other features for the list creator.
We will keep an eye on this. In any case, we will/should take a look at the Stickam Contacts widget and see what improvements we can make to it. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions, suggestions or requests.
Read/WriteWeb has a great write-up on “Business Models For Start Pages”. It’s definitely a good read for those of you interested in the various companies and the business around it. In particular we like the following paragraph regarding “The Widgetizing of the Web”.
So widgets/gadgets are ramping up to be a key part of the Web platform going forward, which all the start pages (big and small) are ideally placed to leverage. And the smaller start pages have certainly not shied away from building up their platforms. Pageflakes now has 100 “flakes” (i.e. widgets) and recently introduced more customization options. Likewise, Netvibes is putting in a lot of work on their module ecosystem. – Read/WriteWeb
The article puts the start page products and services in very good light and with a decent future ahead. Time will tell…
For those of you less concerned about the business and more interested in start pages as a user, you should give the post and its comments a quick read for links to various products and services. Give them a spin, you might find one that you like.
Don’t forget that we have a widget for managing and staying in contact with your Stickam friends. The widget is currently in preview mode and has been tested to work with Pageflakes, Netvibes and other services.
We are announcing the functional preview for the Stickam Contacts widget. This is a preview so its features are limited. Please read and understand this entire post before trying and using the preview. Use at your own risk, security and stability were not a priority or focus for this release. The preview is subject to bugs and changes. However, we will try to make announcements with as much lead time as possible and limit changes during the initial preview period.
The intent is to preview the current design and obtain feedback from users. Future features and development will be determined partly from the response we receive.
Features:
- hosted standalone widget – can be used anywhere a web page can be included
- simple registration
- attempt login
- if already registered then validate login
- if not registered then create registration
- add contact – Stickam “Profile Names”
- enter “Alias” for display (optional)
- status icons (live, chat room, online, offline)
- delete contact
- opens Stickam Player, Chat Room or Profile as appropriate
- auto updates every 5 seconds – no need to refresh page
- logout
Limitations and Disclaimers:
- preview status – subject to bugs and changes
- completely cookies based – for ease of prototyping
- data is only accessible from the computer that registered and created the list
- cookies are set to expire after 30 days
- expire date is reset at last refresh of contacts list
- if you delete your cookies, all data will be lost
- basic encryption and security – do not rely on this
- system is not optimized
- there may be race conditions
Basic Usage Example – Pageflakes:
- go to Pageflakes
- click on “Add Flake” (top left)
- select “Web Page” from list
- enter
http://stickiwidgets.com/widgets/stickam_contacts/
- click “Go” (this should load the login page)
- uncheck “Show toolbar”
- check “Store as Home Page for Flake”
- click “Save”
- click “Add flake to page”
- configure as normal
- enjoy…
Basic Usage Example – Bubbles:
- open Bubbles Settings
- enter
http://stickiwidgets.com/widgets/stickam_contacts/
- click “Add”
- configure as normal
- enjoy…
- Note 1: new windows do not pop up with the Bubbles Gecko Rendering Engine, but the contact list still functions and updates as normal
- Note 2: this makes Stickam function more like an Instant Messenger video chat client
Other Usage:
- blogs
- websites
- start pages
- basically anywhere you can add a web page for viewing or iframe is allowed
- or… open a browser and go to
http://stickiwidgets.com/widgets/stickam_contacts/
