Sticki Widgets

We came across this widget at Widgets Lab. The Hoops Hysteria widget, from SpringWidgets, displays the 2007 NCAA Division I Men’s Championship Tournament bracket and current results from the games. A nice feature is the ability to search the bracket for a specific team and have the bracket show and highlight the game.

You can also navigate the bracket by clicking on the mini-bracket in the top right corner. It would have been nice if they added the ability to click and drag the bracket around to view the bracket.

Clicking on the game box will open a new browser window to the game summary page on FOXSports.com.

Update: We just noticed something really cool about the widget. It periodically updates itself with the latest game info without having to refresh the page.

Ning has re-launched with new functionality to make it drop-dead simple for just about anyone to create their own social network. We have spent the last couple of days playing around with the system. To start your very own social network, just sign up and follow a few simple steps. The basic features are all there; layout customization, RSS feeds, forums, member profiles, blogs, videos, images, etc. You can even add widgets and embeds; this is where it excels as you will see later.

This new release actually allowed us to execute on a project that we’ve been planning for a long time. We just never had to time to develop a social network from the ground up. With Ning, we don’t have to. We can let Ning handle all of the technical issues, which will allow us to focus on developing the social network itself. Check out our Ning social network. It will especially interest you if you are a hockey fan.

Our New Social Network on Ning: Center Ice

Our Center Ice hockey network is a bit of a mashup. It’s obviously built on the Ning platform, but it includes additional value add content via the use of widgets. The default RSS feed feature parses the NHL Plays of The Week content perfectly from YouTube. Daily game scores are provided by SpringWidgets Scoreboard. And surprisingly, Ning allows javascript on their system. We have taken full advantage of this and added full game videos using the Google AJAX Search API.

Center Ice also provides three methods of communication among its members. The default forum from Ning is provided for asynchronous group communications and a live real-time video chat room is powered by Stickam. Couple of the StickiWidgets services provides the glue that binds the Ning platform with Stickam. Lastly, each member can add a personal blog to their profile page for member centric communications.

The question is, “Will anyone care?” For the average person, they just want something there that they can be a part of. They are not going to care about the platform or putting the work into creating the social network. However, Ning does provide people like us with the ability to easily build these networks. And ultimately, it’s up to us to bring the users to the network. We applaud Ning for building a system that is easy to use, customizable and open to widgets.

Does it have limitations? Sure. But, not everyone wants to take on the task of building and maintaining the technical infrastructure to run a social network. We are more than happy to accept that trade-off. Now we just need users. So if you’re a hockey fan… Check out Center Ice.

If you are interested, Ning also has a developer program and premium services.

Update (2007.3.2): added Grazr and some hockey news feeds

Widgetoko posted about the RSS Reader widget from SpringWidgets the other day. While they had good things to say about the widget, they did question why someone would use it.

Suck any RSS feed into this Flash based reader widget-y widget. Works well, looks good, easy to configure… but…why?

Don from SpringWidgets actually responded with…

This is really an OPML, Video, Podcast *and* RSS reader widget.

We built the widget to allow for those people who publish blogs, like this one, who wanted to concurrently publish that content into MySpace easily. But it’s so much more than that

Today, Sexy Widget happened to post about another RSS feed widget by MuseStorm. The write-up was not in response to Widgetoko but it does discuss how feed widgets can be used, among other things specific to MuseStorm and their widget. It also touches on tracking stats for the feed and widget. It is a good read if you have wondered about RSS feed widgets and their usefulness.

We prefer other methods for publishing and consuming feeds for ourselves. However, we do use the SpringWidgets RSS Reader widget on our MySpace and Stickam profiles. Other sites do not always provide a RSS feature that we would like to use. When that is the case, we will deploy the RSS widget to extend our reach to those sites and to users who may not be accustomed to RSS feed readers.

While the MuseStorm stats look impressive it is not free. We utilize the free service from Feedburner for all our feeds and through the feed widget. The free Feedburner stats are much simpler but does the job for our needs (they do have a paid service). In addition, SpringWidgets has partnered with Feedburner to provide more prominent branding for the feed source. Below is an example of our Feedburner RSS feed in the Spring Widgets RSS Reader widget.

Unfortunately, we have not really provided a solid answer to the original question. It really is up to each individual to determine whether RSS feed widgets are what they need. That’s the great thing about widgets, everyone has their own opinion and they can pick and choose which widgets they want to use.