Tom Pimental : Web Creative » widgets

Sprout Builder: An Impressive Online App

admin — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 04:20:03 +0000

I know I’ve been a bit high on widgets lately, but I can’t stop thinking about the implications of the new Sprout Builder widget tool. I scored a beta account from ReadWriteWeb (although it seems like anyone can get one now) and I can’t stop singing the praises of this tool.

After spending 3+ weeks developing the 3 widgets mentioned here previously (I may be biased, but ours are still higher quality), I’m amazed at how quickly one could build professional-looking widgets with Sprout. There’s obvious limitations and a good Flash designer could take your branded widget to much higher places, but Sprout lowers the bar to entry significantly. Any blog owner or even Facebook profile owner could build their own widget now.

I don’t care that Sprout doesn’t seem to have a revenue model, the tool is damn cool and I’d advise jumping into their beta before they figure out they should be charging for this.

Widgets Galore

admin — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 19:25:14 +0000

We launched 2 more widgets last week. I’m still not completely sold on the concept of widgets yet, but I’ll admit we’re seeing some positive signs from the CIO widget already. They didn’t take all that much time to build and now that we have a framework, we can quickly create similar widgets.

The book is still out on widgets, but I’m cautiously optimistic on their performance.

The Widgeting of IDG

admin — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 20:38:13 +0000

We recently partnered with Clearspring to host our suite of widgets. The CIO Wanted widget below is the first one out the gate.

Rather than widgeting every piece of content in our database, my goal is to develop widgets that are actually useful to readers. We have two more in development that should be launching soon. I’m not sure how well these will perform, but they are an experiment well worth the effort.

Big thanks to Shaun, Matt, Bob and the Clearspring team for getting this one out so quickly!