Recently in Widgets Category

Widgets powering social software and syndicated experiences.

  1. Aug21

    Intel and Yahoo! announce Widget Channel for HDTV

    Flickr on Widget Channel

    The Internet is coming to your TV, reclaiming your split attention span from the other gadgets around the house. Intel announced its latest effort to power your living room yesterday with new media processors, reference designs, and software stacks that may eventually find their way into the cable boxes, Blu-ray players, and home media centers of 2010. Intel partnered with Yahoo! to deliver Internet-connected widgets, advertising, and content to potential partners with a software stack branded The Widget Channel. Yahoo! spent about two years customizing Yahoo! Widget Engine for high-definition televisions and hardware-accelerated graphics displays. Yahoo! will pitch its widget engine for televisions, display advertising integration, and customizable widget gallery to cable operators, television manufacturers, and other major consumer electronics companies as Yahoo! seeks a prominent role in what it calls the "Cinematic Internet."

    I visited the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco yesterday for a first-hand look at the new prototype widgets platform. I was lucky enough to bump into Eric Kim, Intel's SVP and General Manager of the Digital Home group, and recorded a 8-minute overview of Widget Channel. I've embedded the walk-through below. High-resolution snapshots of individual Widget Channel widgets are available on my Flickr account.

    This video walk-through of Intel Widget Channel requires QuickTime or Flash Player for playback.
    1. Yahoo! Widgets on TV
    2. From reference design to reality
    3. Picking apart the pieces
    4. Summary

    Yahoo! Widgets on TV

    Widget developers may be already familiar with the Yahoo! Widget Engine, also known as Konfabulator. This desktop engine started out on the Mac, ported to Windows, and now runs inside the Linux-based Intel TV platform. The Widget Engine team is a part of Yahoo!'s Connected Life division which also includes Yahoo! Mobile -- powered by Blueprint widgets -- and DVR acquisition Meedio. Yahoo! has tied its data APIs to TiVo and Windows Media Center in the past, accessible as a full-screen application after a deep dive through the device's navigation options. The Widget Channel and its alpha-blended snippet dock complementing the main viewing experience of your TV is a radical departure from past Yahoo! partnerships in the space, an obvious result of designing an experience from the ground-up instead of bolting onto other vendor's solutions.

    Widget developers can build new widgets for Widget Channel using most of the same resource bundles and runtimes used on the desktop Konfabulator engine. XML manifest files define widget metadata, preferences, and screen UI. JavaScript powers on-screen interactions and dynamic data. Yahoo! Widget Engine includes a WebKit run-time, which will hopefully be ported by Yahoo! and Intel to support hardware accelerated CSS and other nice features on the new software stack.

    Widgets written for the new Yahoo! Widget Engine for TV must conform to four major UI modes: snippet content on the bottom dock, sidebar content, full-screen display, and background processing. Docked snippets are more than just minimized widgets: viewers can cycle through multiple snippets inside a single widget such as weather in various cities or a sports scores. Most sidebar displays mocked-up by Yahoo! used an accordion design pattern to collapse multiple content sections inside a small space. Full-screen experiences match the full-screen designs of the Web. The demo widget for Flickr uses their newly redesigned Flash slideshow display for a familiar look and feel from desktop to living room.

    I couldn't get a solid answer from Intel regarding how tightly Widget Channel was tied to Yahoo!'s Widget Engine. Intel wants to sell its new consumer electronics system-on-a-chip, the media processor CE 3100, far and wide with or without the Yahoo! engine. I expect the underlying platform contains a native widget layer and programming environment with tighter integration but more programming complexity than Yahoo!'s engine in much the same way NVIDIA Preface bolsters its platform offering with a Windows Sideshow gadgets run-time.

    From reference design to reality

    Gigabyte MD300 DVP rear

    Yesterday's announcement from Intel and Yahoo! is merely a reference design showing off what both companies hope is the future of Internet-enabled consumer electronics. The Yahoo! Widget Engine for TV still needs a lot of work and there are currently no shipping products implementing the hardware and software stack demonstrated yesterday. Cable companies, television manufacturers, and other consumer electronics companies will evaluate the stack over the next year for possible inclusion in products shipping next decade.

    Intel is trying to displace consumer electronics chipsets already in production from IBM and NVIDIA. Sony, Toshiba, and IBM worked together to create the Cell multiprocessor already powering the PlayStation 3 and built-in to the next generation of televisions. NVIDIA chipsets are inside cable boxes from Scientific Atlanta and others. The upcoming Java-based tru2way cable software platform is already under active development by consumer electronics companies and software vendors. Widget Channel could operate as an additional layer on top of tru2way, as mentioned in Comcast's press release yesterday. The word "Yahoo" does not appear in the Comcast press release and Comcast has only announced their intent to evaluate the new reference design against their own Java-based offerings in 2009.

    Picking apart the pieces

    Intel Widget Channel stack

    Widget Channel is a Linux-based operating system with platform software and middleware provided by channel partners. The Widget Engine is one of the available software options on the device. Carrier-specific back-end services including reporting, storage, security, and developer certificate verification reside within the carrier network with possible add-ons such as display advertising powered by Yahoo! or others. Each Widget Channel implementation can choose its own Widget Gallery service and white-listed widgets and possibly receive extra content from a compatible widget gallery offering served by Yahoo!.

    Yahoo! has a good opportunity to serve display advertisements, sell premium widget placements and certifications, and promote its own content within each Widget Channel deployment. It may be possible for Yahoo! and Google to program their own compatible widget and advertising layers on top of the base Intel platform to replace or compete with Yahoo!. Major features such as contextual widgets and advertising layers have yet to be developed for the platform, leaving new opportunities for other Internet companies to step in with their own swappable components inside the software stack.

    Summary

    Yahoo! Widget Gallery home screen

    The Intel Widget Channel provides a peek inside the connected future of our living rooms. Consumer electronics companies and large carriers from the cable and satellite industries want to participate in the premium content offerings available through Internet-connected electronics and new software stacks from chip vendors could help bootstrap new services. Intel wants to sell more chips, Yahoo! wants to serve more ads, and cable companies want to boost subscription revenues without major investments in new infrastructure.

    Intel admits interactive services on the television has been a popular goal over the last 10 years but without measured success. [T]he rate of adoption has so far been disappointing, studies show that consumers remain receptive to the concept. New levels of broadband penetration combined with high-definition viewing could change consumer adoption but we are still a few years out from real adoptable implementations. We'll have to wait and see what hardware and services are announced in 2009 before spending too much development time against a reference design.

  2. Jul01

    Announcing Widget Summit 2008

    Widget Summit logo

    I am hosting a my third annual Widget Summit conference November 3rd and 4th at Hotel Nikko in San Francisco. The two-day widget event will once again educate and connect a a widget ecosystem of publishers, toolmakers, developers, and service providers across a variety of platforms including desktop, mobile, web, and social networks. I enjoy taking a look beyond the hype with a sold-out audience interested in building better syndicated content experience through distributed widgets.

    The widget industry is constantly evolving as publishers extend their reach beyond their web address and into remote locations already bustling with activity. The popularity of a single site pales in comparison to the aggregate crowds gathered in front of their Windows Vista desktops, iPhones, or My Yahoo! homepages. In the past year we've seen new context added to our widget environments connecting us to the location, friend list, or shared application of our widget community wherever they may interact with our content. Today's smartest widgets enjoy a close bind with their parent platform's features, regularly poll their home base for relevant updates, and reach new audiences through targeted and integrated content interactions.

    At my first widget conference in 2006 we struggled with the name "widget" and this new distribution network most people interpreted as a Flash badge on MySpace. Last year iPhone web applications and the social canvas of Facebook was all the rage, with new opportunities in the enterprise slowly emerging through the rollout of Windows Vista and personal information dashboards powered by software as a service offerings from established consumer brands such as Google and Netvibes.

    A lot has changed in the widget space in the 8 months since the last Widget Summit. Widgets are going mainstream, with the startup valuations and press coverage to match. Somewhere among the fog of hype are useful opportunities to reach targeted audiences on their platform of choice. Let's take a look at some of the big changes we've seen since October 2007.

    • New collaborative technologies such as OpenSocial and its open-source reference container Apache Shindig are quickly creating new widget environments at companies that could not afford to create their own implementations from scratch. MySpace, Orkut, Hi5, LinkedIn, and Yahoo! have all committed to a standard set of widget APIs.
    • The Facebook platform is in the middle of its first big changes since its 2.0 release in May 2007. Shifting concepts of profile display, authoring, and member interaction will require new upgrades or fresh opportunities for completely new applications.
    • The iPhone continues to spark interest in mobile web app development based on single-browser environments. iPhone 2.0 will put smartphones in the hands of a worldwide audience for about the price of a ubiquitous iPod and hopefully expand mobile data opportunities.
    • Advertising networks have created separate product offerings specifically focused on widgets. DoubleClick syndicates and tracks widgets through its DART platform. AOL's Platform-A recently announced widget-specific advertising and sponsorship powered by TACODA's trail of cookie bounties.
    • The enterprise continues to adopt software as a service and widgets are no exception. Google, IBM, and Microsoft are extending their hosted software into large companies and bundling the latest widget technologies inside an integrated package.
    • Consumer electronics ship with widgets built-in. Your next car, GPS unit, television, or alarm clock may contain customized widget content.

    These are just a few of the large trends creating new opportunities for publishers extending the reach of their content through widgets. We'll cover all the major widget platforms and opportunities at this year's Widget Summit, providing the business sense and development basics to kick off your new widget initiatives in 2009.

    You may have noticed this blog grow quiet over the past few months as I rebuilt the conference software behind Widget Summit and aligned the many business details needed to create the best possible experience. In the next week I'll share some of the technical details behind my new sites and services.

    Registration for Widget Summit is now open with early bird pricing of $795 for the two-day conference in downtown San Francisco on November 3rd and 4th (the Monday and Tuesday before Web 2.0 Summit). I hope you can join us for what should be our best conference yet!

  3. Nov05

    Windows Vista Gadgets

    Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system includes support for widgets on every desktop. Windows widgets are permanently docked in a sidebar, providing up-to-date information and easy access to small tasks throughout the day. In this article I will walk you through the major components of a Windows Vista Sidebar gadget including major differentiating features, best practices, and tips for widget packaging and distribution.

    Note: Microsoft calls its widgets "gadgets" in an attempt to avoid more legal battles with Apple. I refer to Microsoft Gadgets for Windows Vista Sidebar as simply "widget" throughout the article to keep things simple.

    The short version

    Windows Vista Sidebar gadgets are mini-applications powered by familiar web technologies. The Sidebar has three main views and user interactions -- docked, flyout, and floating -- for rich widget interactions. Your widgets are downloaded to the user's desktop, unpacked, and executed in a local machine trusted state. With great power comes great responsibility, and you will want to take a few extra steps to make sure your widget is seen as a trusted part of the user's daily computing environment. Now on to the good stuff.

    Distribution and market share

    Windows Vista editions

    Windows Vista is the most recent edition of the Windows line of operating systems. Widgets are an included feature on every version of Windows Vista running on a computer with over 512 MB of RAM (Vista Capable).

    Microsoft released Windows Vista worldwide on January 30, 2007 and was immediately included as the default operating system pre-installed on sales of new PCs. Market share numbers are always a bit fuzzy, but web analytics firm Net Applications observed a 8% market share for Windows Vista in October 2007. Vista's current market share is significantly behind Windows XP's 79% and only 1.4% above Mac OS X but continuously climbing as individuals and businesses purchase new computers.

    Windows Vista Sidebar clock weatherEach new copy of Windows Vista displays an analog clock, photo slide show, and a miniature feed reader in Sidebar by default. Sidebar holds 5 widgets, leaving two spots open for your new content even if the user does not understand how to remove the defaults. Vista also ships with address book, calendar, CPU meter, currency convertor, notes, picture puzzle, stocks, and weather widgets pre-installed for easy customization. Users discover and install new widgets through Windows Live Gallery.

    Miniature applications

    Windows Vista widgets can take advantage of the full power of a desktop operating system. You know your widget will render like an Internet Explorer 7 webpage, playback media content in Windows Media Player, and have access to platform functions such as calendar, contacts, and feeds. Widgets are defined and described using XML and HTML. Widget content is positioned and styled using CSS. Widget application logic is powered by ActiveX, JScript (essentially JavaScript without the Sun trademark), and VBScript.

    Widget execution and privileges are very similar to HTML Applications (HTAs) on the Windows platform. Your widget is rendered by MSHTML, one of the main components of Internet Explorer 7. Your widget is a packaged set of resources living inside the user's applications directory and executes within a Local Machine Zone.

    Three widget views

    Windows Vista Gadgets docked flyout floating

    A Windows Vista Sidebar widget has three main data views: docked to the sidebar, docked to the sidebar with an adjacent data fly-out, and a free-floating window on the user's desktop. A successful widget should take advantage of all three use-cases to provide the best possible experience on the Vista platform.

    Docked

    Docked Windows Vista gadgetA docked widget sits in an always visible sidebar. Users might glance at information throughout the day (e.g. current weather or a stock price), execute a quick task (e.g. jot down a quick note or execute a search), or take a quick break (e.g. solve a sudoku or picture puzzle). A docked widget is 130 pixels wide and at least 60 pixels tall.

    Docked with flyout

    Windows Vista Sidebar stock price gadget with flyout

    A gadget can expand and provide relative, contextual information through the use of a flyout. A flyout is connected to your docked gadget but expands into the space adjoining the sidebar when a user takes action. You might display extended information in this space such as a detailed weather report, include additional context such as a stock trading chart (pictured above), or display a full media file such as a large photo or video. A widget flyout adds rich interaction directly inside the widget view without spawning a new browser window or other complex actions.

    Floating

    Windows Vista Sidebar weather widget floating

    A floating widget detaches from the Sidebar and instead floats on the user's desktop. Floating widgets can display more information than a desktop widget by expanding up to 400 pixels square (about a 3x increase over the sidebar's 130 pixels). A user can choose to always have your floating widget on top of all other application windows but will most likely access your floating widgets content as a heads-up-display by specifically engaging the Sidebar application through a click or keystroke.

    Image and text handlers

    The Windows Sidebar g namespace helps you create background images, place text, and resize images from a DOM scriptable interface. Image helpers provide quick and easy resizing of any image asset using Vista's built-in thumbnail tools. The GIMAGE protocol resizes and caches local images less then 256 pixels square in a much more efficient manner than a typical img element.

    Access system information

    Windows Vista connects Sidebar gadgets to other parts of the operating system through a special System JavaScript object. The System interface provides easy access to current machine status (e.g. CPU and memory utilization), address book contacts, e-mail messages, or even the Windows Shell. Developers can take advantage of VBScript or ActiveX for custom functionality.

    Packaging

    Windows Vista gadget warning message

    Windows Vista Sidebar gadgets are distributed as a zipped archive, Windows cabinet file, or a Windows Installer 4.0 file. Each format offers its own simplicity and trust levels. You'll need to make a few key install decisions based on your trust concerns, the features of your widget, and budget.

    ZIP archive

    The ZIP file format is a widely distributed compression format with compression and decompression tools present on all major operating systems. A widget publisher should simply place all widget assets in a single folder and compress its contents using their favorite ZIP compression tool. Your newly created archive should be renamed with a .gadget extension for easy recognition and handling by the Vista operating system. Vista will examine your package and decompress its content into the user's Sidebar gadget folder.

    Note: Windows Vista Sidebar gadgets should have a MIME type of application/x-windows-gadget and not application/zip. Setting the right MIME type on your server provides the appropriate desktop hooks to make sure your widget makes it beyond a download folder and into the Sidebar.

    Windows Cabinet

    Windows cabinet files allow publishers to digitally sign a Vista gadget for a more trusted install process. You are no longer an Unknown Publisher with a red warning shield possibly making your users think twice about installing your desktop gadget. Signed gadget publishers are mentioned by name on the install screen with a link back to their website for further information. Signed gadgets receive a yellow warning shield and an upgraded warning message of only "potentially" harming the user's computer.

    Windows digital signatures are more expensive than a free compression tool but do add some user comfort and trust during the install process. If you are a big company with thousands of downloads such as eBay or Netflix you might even already have Windows signature file assigned to your organization. If not you may want to evaluate total costs on a per-install basis and factor in a larger adoption rate for a signed gadget.

    Windows Installer

    Windows Installer can unpackage your cabinet file and execute a few other setup tasks to make sure the user's computer is properly configured for your gadget. If you need to make sure the user's registry settings allow ActiveX execution or accessing data from multiple domains you will need to use a Windows Installer to properly configure the machine for your gadget.

    Sideshow

    Windows Vista Sideshow Asus

    Windows Sideshow connects Vista PCs to peripheral device displays such as a digital picture frame, television remote controls, or your intelligent refrigerator. Do you not have a refrigerator that connects to Windows computers on the network for the latest weather updates and new recipes? Sideshow is a very early-stage concept that might have adoption rates somewhere between a MSN Direct refrigerator magnet and a Tablet PC but is worth a mention when discussing Vista gadgets.

    Vista Sidebar gadgets can be extended for use with Windows Sideshow. Many Sideshow devices are powered by the NVIDIA PREFACE platform so if you are really serious about creating widgets for a remote control or refrigerator you might program directly against the PREFACE features (formerly PortalPlayer).

    Summary

    Windows Vista Sidebar gadgets take advantage of the web browser, desktop scripting, rich graphics process, and multimedia capabilities of Microsoft's latest operating system. The always-on sidebar is an attractive marketing space for widget content and a quick way to provide up-to-date information to your Windows users. The Sidebar's prime real estate only supports about 5 widgets, so you'll have to execute well and earn your coveted spot on your target users' permanent screen.

    Sidebar gadgets are lightweight applications coded using Web technologies already familiar to most developers. You can quickly build a simple connected gadget inside a mini HTML page or Flash Player runtime but a full-featured integration will provide a deeper engagement and more gadget views over time by taking advantage of the full features of the Windows Vista gadget platform.

  4. Oct29

    Widget Basics

    The total number of widget platforms and deployment options intimidate many newcomers. Each platform offers a unique audience and features, but widget basics remain the same across Windows Vista, Nokia S60, Google, MySpace. and more. In this post I will outline the basic components of a widget including static assets, user preferences, processing remote data, and rendering your final widget.

    Create a default view

    Every widget has an at-rest state. Your widget might have a background image or color, static text, or other fixed pieces not dependent on external data updates. You will likely define areas of your widget that will later contain the result of dynamic data updates. This at-rest state, or default view, is the first step towards a complete widget and the first thing your users will see before retrieving their custom data.

    Apple Dashboard widget front background

    Apple's Dashboard weather widget has a slim background with a simple layout showing the current temperature and weather condition. Today's temperature is displayed on the right, with a degree sign built-in for data context. The current weather condition (sunny, cloudy, raining, etc) will appear in the center.

    Gather custom preferences

    Every widget platform supports user customizations collected using a familiar user interface and stored on the parent platform along with other user data. In some cases you might be able to tap into preference data already stored on the platform such as a user's location, age, or preferred number of headlines per widget.

    iGoogle weather preference

    iGoogle's weather widget stores both a country and a city as your weather location. A weather widget might use different data APIs by country or region, or adjust its wording based on a user's location (i.e. Postal Code vs. ZIP Code).

    Widget preference data is stored on the widget platform -- Windows Vista, iGoogle, etc. -- inside a user data store. Preferences can be structured as drop down lists, sliders, numbers, text, and much more depending on the data you would like to capture.

    Retrieve dynamic data

    Dynamic widgets receive regular data updates from a remote source and process the results. You will likely customize the data retrieved based on the user preferences defined above and create a targeted experience for each user. Data updates are often cached and processed by each widget platform to save development time and increase your widget's performance. The data formats below can be cached and processed by the parent widget platform to produce fast response times and allow same domain access to your data.

    Web feed
    RSS 2.0 or Atom Syndication Format 1.0. Your site might already produce these syndicated feeds popular for distributing the latest news headlines from your site to specialized feed readers. Widget platforms typically store a subset of all available feed elements (e.g. title, content, link, and author) which may or may not meet your needs.
    JSON
    JavaScript Object Notation, a lightweight data interchange format. JSON offers fast processing and manipulation of custom data. Your website may already produce JSON output to power asynchronous JavaScript requests that can be extended into your widgets. Most widget platforms will convert your JSON objects into their appropriate number, text, or list types for easy manipulation by your widget.
    XML
    XML is a popular data interchange format for custom-defined data sent between computers and their programs. XML snippets power Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) functionality on many websites and can also provide your widgets with dynamic data updates.
    Plain text
    Plain text is the most lightweight data format and is swallowed whole by widget platforms. Plain text is a good data choice for small pieces of content (i.e. current temperature is 65) or complete HTML snippets you would like to insert directly into your widget. You could also process a list of comma-separated values or other forms of structured data as a plain text data source.

    Creating dynamic data in an appropriate syndication format is often the first step widget publishers need to take before kicking off a broader widget program. You will need to expose your data in a syndicated format before distributing your widget.

    Draw your widget

    You have defined your blank widget, collected preferences and customizations from the user, and retrieved your widget's dynamic data. You now need to place your processed data into the locations you defined in your initial view.

    Your widget code should construct the appropriate HTML or Flash markup describing your updated data. In the weather widget described above we need to update the temperature field with the current temperature and display a picture corresponding to current weather conditions if available. We have already assigned an identifier to our widget's temperature and weather condition areas, and update these elements with our latest data.

    Final Apple Dashboard weather widget

    Pictured above is an example of a final widget view. The current weather in San Francisco is 58 degrees and cloudy.

    The term "San Francisco" is a verified location based on the user's defined preferences (you were able to interpret the input and map it to a unique identifier compatible with your data provider). Our weather API returned two pieces of data: a condition of cloudy and temperature of 58. We displayed a pre-defined picture of the cloudy weather condition inside our widget's condition area and updated the temperature text to 58.

    Summary

    Every widget platform has a similar method of widget construction and processing. Available features, caching, proxies, and widget helpers vary by platform but the basic approach and mentality remains the same. You are creating a tiny application on the Web, mobile, or desktop that may respond to its environment and collect live updates from the Internet.

    A provided a simplified view of a very broad development area. I'll dive a bit deeper into each platform type and the capabilities of major widget platforms in future blog posts. This post expands on my opening slide from my recent 8-minute "high order bit" presentation at the Web 2.0 Summit.

  5. Oct26

    Microsoft opens widget marketplace for Vista and Windows Live

    Windows Live Gallery Marketplace

    Microsoft opened a new online marketplace last night to sell a new class of desktop and web applications directly to consumers. The new version of Windows Live Gallery extends the existing Windows Live Gold partnership program with premium content listings, partner storefronts, and the ability to charge Microsoft's users for each new widget. Microsoft's widget marketplace uses the same Microsoft Points currency system as Xbox Live Marketplace and Zune Marketplace. The new gallery site also includes the ability to rate reviews ("4 out of 5 people found this review helpful") and widget developers featured on the front page of the site.

    Customers can buy a new widget and customize before making a final purchase. A music company might license songs bloggers can include in their Windows Live Spaces page, or The Wall Street Journal might sell a premium content widget for Vista Sidebar users. Publishers can set their own price and tap into Microsoft's existing payment processing and currency-independent marketplace used by millions of people around the world.

    The Windows Live Gallery Marketplace is the latest attempt by Microsoft to monetize small transactions on its platform. Xbox Live has been extremely popular source of tiny games such as Tetris or Zuma, helping the company reach new audiences of game players and developers alike. The new Gallery Marketplace opens up Microsoft's platform as a paid distribution endpoint for content from around the web, which should shake things up a bit as new platforms consider new ways to help their developers monetize applications and content.

  6. Oct06

    Google releases stand-alone desktop widget engine

    iGoogle Desktop widgets

    Google Desktop widgets can now be embedded in your iGoogle personal start page. This new functionality adds OS-level functionality such as CPU utilization, currently playing tracks in iTunes, or a battery indicator inside a Web interface. Google Desktop 5.5 is now available in a widget-only version for Windows 2000, XP, and Vista to bridge the desktop and Web worlds.

    The decoupling of Google Desktop Sidebar puts its desktop widget platform in direct competition with Windows Vista Sidebar and Konfabulator. Google can use its widget platform as a beachhead onto the desktop and later encourage its users to enable more Google Desktop features such as search and personalization.

    (Disclosure: Google is a sponsor of my upcoming widget conference, Widget Summit.)

  7. Oct05

    Widget Summit schedule complete

    The Widget Summit schedule is now complete, and I am pretty happy with the results. My goal for the conference is to provide two days of intensive education about the current state of the widget industry and share best practices with the many new publishers entering the space. This year's conference spans two days, October 15-16, covering both the business and implementation of widgets. I will share some of my speaker notes before the conference, but first let's take a look at some of the overarching themes of Widget Summit.

    I've invited the key people behind the platforms to share their first-hand expert knowledge and answer detailed question. You'll hear from the creator of the Facebook Platform, Dave Fetterman, instead of a vision talk or summary from Mark Zuckerberg. I'm sure Mark might sell more tickets, but you can read the history of Facebook in your favorite business press.

    Mobile

    We'll have the heads of third party widget development for both Nokia S60 and Apple iPhone on stage talking about new ways developers can create rich applications for smartphones. Yes, Apple does have a small team dedicated to independent software developers on the iPhone.

    We'll also have University of Maryland professor Ben Bederson sharing his many years of experience designing for mobile displays and interfaces.

    Monetization

    Publishers are pretty familiar with measurement and monetization of traffic on their own websites, but widgets are still a source of confusion. Traditional web measurement tools such as Google Analytics have extended their reach into widgets. We've also seen new widget-specific entrants such as Clearspring and Gigya wrap widgets in a proprietary container for new forms of measurement. All three companies will present during the Widget Measurement panel at Widget Summit.

    Once you have measured your widget audience, how do you monetize? Traditional advertising solutions such as DoubleClick have extended their reach to power in-widget advertising. VP of Rich Media Ari Paparo will share the latest ways big companies are experimenting with widget advertising. We will also have some of the largest widget-specific advertising networks on stage, virtual currency site Peanut Labs and widget promotion network RockYou. The Widget Advertising panel will present widgets as a new revenue source for content syndication.

    Implementation

    It's not enough to simply talk about building a Facebook application or a Dashboard widget. Publishers want to know how much work is involved, the skills needed to create widget content for each platform, and the features necessary to make sure their investment in time and money is ultimately successful. We'll have sessions at Widget Summit that walk you through the steps needed to create an application on Facebook, a sidebar widget for Windows Vista, or a JavaScript widget for blog sidebars.

    If a widget book existed it would likely be out of date at the time of printing. The best way to learn about the latest technologies and implementations is to directly engage the creators of the widget platform and the people creating new widget content every day. They will help you avoid common mistakes, expose a few short cuts, and make sure you don't make some of the most common mistakes.

    Summary

    Widget Summit is just over a week away and should provide an in-depth education for anyone considering a widget strategy or deeper syndication involvement. The schedule is now complete, with some of the best available speakers in their subject areas sharing their expert knowledge on stage. Each speaker is directly involved in widgets at his or her company, and uniquely positioned to answer in-depth questions either on-stage or in the audience.

    Tickets are still available if you would like to join us for two days of widget education and networking.

  8. Sep30

    Widget nomenclature

    Widget terminology often confuses newcomers. The variance of terms -- widget, gadget, module, badge, button, etc. -- can create impressions of a fragmented industry in its early days, not able to agree on anything as simple as a name. In this post I will walk you through the etymology and nomenclature of widgets and its variances. I interpret each term as a separate meaning, not a synonym, depending on the structure and use of widget content.

    A "widget" is a generic term for a manufactured object. The word first occurs in the 1924 Broadway play Beggar on Horseback as an object with no real value, yet mass produced for common usage. The main character is torn between his poor living as an artist creating things he enjoys, or a job in a factory creating meaningless "widgets." In economics we reference a widget as a generic object that should not distract from the example at hand. We reference Bob's Widget Shop instead of Bob's Donut Shop to focus on the growth numbers, optimum pricing, and other aspects of economics where the details of a donut are irrelevant.

    The term "widget" is also used to describe the basic building blocks of a desktop operating system's graphical user interface. Desktop application developers can take advantage of standard user interface libraries such as a menu, buttons, or display pane. Ralph Swick and Mark Ackerman of MIT chose this word for the X Window System in 1988. The term is still used today in the desktop development space to describe building new user interfaces.

    We chose this term since all other common terms were overloaded with inappropriate connotations. We offer the observation to the skeptical, however, that the principal realization of a widget is its associated X window and the common initial letter is not un-useful.

    The familiar idea of a desktop building block is easily extended to the world of Konfabulator "widgets." Associating the name of Konfabulator's customizable objects with the small configuration tools of the OS helped desktop developers more quickly grasp the new concept blending Web and desktop technologies.

    Web widgets

    Apple owns the trademark on the term "web widget" for "software for use in creating other Internet and web-based software." Large international corporations such as Microsoft and Google likely conducted a trademark search and stayed away from the term for their web products, instead opting to use "gadget."

    Personalized homepages such as iGoogle and Live.com refer to the multiple components of their pages as "modules" within their source code, which makes sense in a web context.

    Web badge

    Made on a Mac

    A web badge is the bumper sticker of the Internet. Web badges are small pieces of flair placed in a site's sidebar or footer to display an affiliation with a group or cause. Over the years we have seen small images promoting a site's XHTML or CSS compliance, an author's support for a political candidate, or fans of the Chicago Bears or Apple computers proudly displaying their support.

    Dynamic web badges might pull in the total money raised for a campaign or display the score from last night's Cubs game to improve its usefulness and impact.

    Web button

    Digg this button

    A web button is a small piece of interactive content placed on a web page. Web buttons prompt the user to take action by adding the page to their bookmarks, adding a vote on a social news site, or viewing related content. The most popular web buttons such as Digg and del.icio.us integrate live contextual data with a call to action.

    Plug-ins

    Widget plugins are integrated pieces of a site's publishing experience. Plugins operate on an author's server and can take full advantage of server-side scripting, template integrations, and site-wide publishing preferences. Popular blogging tools Drupal, Movable Type, and WordPress support sidebar widgets powered by plugins.

    Summary

    Widgets come in many shapes, sizes, and functions and luckily there are specific terms to describe each. Desktop widgets, personal homepage modules, webpages pages, blog post buttons, blog sidebar widgets and plugins all describe what we generically call widgets.

  9. Sep27

    A brief widget history

    The widget technology we take for granted today has been over 25 years in the making. Small pieces of customized desktop and web content have made their way into our lives whether you call it an accessory, a widget, a web part, or a gadget. Below is a visual timeline of widget history and a brief summary of how some of today's widget sectors got their start.

    Widget timeline displaying major events in widget history.

    Desk ornaments

    Widget concepts date back to the invention of the graphical user interface for home use. Bud Tribble and Andy Hertzfeld brainstormed a concept named "desk ornaments" in 1981 for the original Macintosh operating system. These ornaments, later renamed accessories, wrapped small computing functions such as a calculator, notepad, or simple games within a single application.

    Personalized homepage

    Netscape PowerStart was a personal start page application built-in to the Netscape Navigator web browser in 1996. PowerStart was released just two weeks after the original My Yahoo! and included many of the dynamic web page concepts we use today. PowerStart combined your latest e-mail, stock quotes, weather reports, and other pieces of data from the web and desktop into a single page. Popular homepage components were powered by Java, dynamically loaded JavaScript content, and other technologies we now take for granted. Yahoo! released My Yahoo! two weeks before PowerStart, and the web world now had access to customized information.

    Desktop widgets

    In October 2000 Stardock released a new GUI engine for Windows named DesktopX. Custom objects display system information such as CPU and memory utilization, news tickers, and live updates from the Web.

    Arlo Rose and Perry Clarke released Konfabulator for Mac OS X as a shareware side project in 2003 and it quickly grew into its own company, Pixoria. Konfabulator blended web technologies such as JavaScript with the desktop rendering strengths of OS X. Pixoria was acquired by Yahoo! in July 2005.

    Summary

    The fancy widgets timeline is a much more fun way to browse the last 25 years of widget history. The biggest surprise compiling the list was just how close some related events occurred.

  10. Sep18

    Google introduces Gadget Ads

    Google officially launched Google Gadgets as an ad unit tonight after about three months of pilot testing. Google's AdWords platform now supports Google Gadget content in addition to existing text, image, and video offerings. The gadget ads feature an entirely new widget analytics platform for tracking gadget success and interaction, an open caching proxy hosted by Google's geo-distributed servers, and the introduction of YouTube as a video hosting and transcoding platform free from any Google branding. I previously covered Google's upcoming advertising widgets in early May.

    Advertisers can create Google Gadget content in any size supported by AdWords images. In the example shown above Intel combined a Flash game with tabs displaying images and text with more information on the Intel Centrino Duo mobile processor. Each gadget interaction is recorded according to a set list of actions such as mouse over, tab views, entering a ZIP code, subscribing to a web feed, or initiating audio or visual playback. External links such as a visit to an external website pass through Google trackers for CPC billing.

    Mixed Media

    Starbucks meeting planner Google Gadget

    Gadget ads provide new mixed media interactions across Google's AdSense network. A Starbucks ad unit could display a web feed of the latest 5 tracks playing in its stores, query the local weather and suggest either an iced or hot drink, display local stores on a Google Map, and help you browse seasonal offerings from within a single ad unit. Google serves all of the content via proxy, and the rich media load never touches Starbucks' servers.

    Gadget ads also integrate with DoubleClick's DART for tracking as part of a larger portfolio. Google is currently limiting the number of publishers with access to widget advertising due to its more technical nature but existing Flash advertisers may already have the option exposed in AdWords.

    YouTube ad hosting

    Google is promoting YouTube as a video hosting and transcoding destination for advertisers. The Google Gadget Ads tutorial page includes detailed instructions for separating hosted Flash video content from an advertiser's video playback tools. This tutorial is the first time I have seen Google promote the use of YouTube in an without Google branding.

    Open caching proxy

    Google will cache almost any content passed to its gadget caching proxy including images, CSS, and JavaScript.

    http://gmodules.com/ig/proxy?url= + your URL

    Google delivers any file on your behalf from its thousands of servers distributed around the globe. It's like your own free CDN for your websites, although primarily designed for gadget content. I can cache my site's CSS through Google for example.

    Summary

    Online advertising is big business and the primary monetization engine of new web startups. Google's expansion of its dominant AdWords product into the widget space should extend the demand for quality gadget developers and designers, and bring even more attention to the space. Each advertisement is also listed in the Google Gadgets branded content directory, which may cause some product fans to integrate branded interactions for free on their blogs or personal homepage.

    Google is currently promoting gadget developers and companies experienced in Google Gadget development and design. It seems like a really good way to get exposure and potential contracts from big clients such as Honda or Coca-Cola. Designers and widget programmers may want to go get listed and take advantage of some new revenue opportunities.

    It's always exciting to see new advertising options emerge that may have richer interaction experiences and therefore drive a higher CPM. I added AdSense to my blog entry pages a few months ago hoping I might catch a new gadget ad in action -- it's so far not creating much revenue -- and I now expect even more regular Google Gadget content matched with my pages.

    Widget advertising is one of the emerging widget topics we will cover at this year's Widget Summit event October 15-16 in San Francisco.

Niall Kennedy Niall Kennedy is a web technologist in San Francisco, California in the United States. I am very interested in the world of... MORE »

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