Widget World

I love flash and unfortunately, I am not picky about substance. However I do want the widgets I use to be meaningful. I am experimenting with BubbleShare as I hope we can successfully incorporate it with the Mooresville project. The eBay widget I am exploring as I update my handouts for the Searching on eBay class. eBay is constantly changing which makes my screenshots obsolete quickly.

The following is from a New York Times article detailing widgets as being used by bloggers. Ed Anuff, a co-founder of Widgetbox.com, divides widgets into three categories. “One is self-expression widgets, like photo galleries, games or YouTube videos that you like,” he said. The second category includes widgets that generate revenue for a blogger, like a box that displays auctions from a particular eBay category, or a blogger’s favorite DVDs from Amazon.com.

The third category, Mr. Anuff said, encompasses “site-enhancement widgets, like discussion forums, news feeds or a guest book, which provide better utility for your Web site.” Widgetbox is a site begun in September (2006) that collects widgets, spotlighting the newest and most popular ones; it offers more than 500 widgets.

As of September 25 of this year, Widgetbox now offers over 20,000 widgets. I wanted to explore widgets which I thought could be a viable option for Mooresville. I know every public library in the state of Indiana is required to fill out a report detailing their impact on their surrounding communities. One of the seemingly endless figures that is needed for the report are the number of hits on the library's website. On one of the listservs I belong to, there was a discussion not too long ago about where the counter should be located to provide the most accurate results.

Hence I have incorporated a counter on this blog, just to see how hard it is to create and use. I ran across the black cat widget on the main page of Widgetbox and while not practical for Mooresville (maybe at Halloween???), it gives me great enjoyment, especially when the cat is purring. A contented cat provides a calming influence and has been proven to lower blood pressure.

So my frustration this week has been my inability to successfully insert either a counter or change the skin for ALL users on the MPL wiki. Hopefully at class, I can verbally communicate my efforts and we, as a team, can rectify the problem. My fingers are crossed.



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