Snipperoo

Where do widgets come from?

Sprout Builder starts charging

I've always loved Sprout Builder , a service that allows you to construct widgets through a great online interface. I've used it to create loads of projects and I always thought it was a brilliant way to try out and demo potential projects. Of course Sprout have to create a revenue stream, and after a long free period they've introduced a charging structure. You can pay from $19 a month for individual access which gives you 15 projects up to professional status for $299 a month and 60 projects. Not a bad price for a service that offers a lot. But - one thing that bothers me is, what happens to my widgets if I cancel my subscription?

Q. What happens to my sprouts if I cancel my subscription?
A. If you cancel your subscription both your account and your existing Sprouts will be made inactive and you won’t be able to access them.

This means that you have to keep up your subscirption for ever - even if you end up with only a single live widget. There's another problem with this structure. Maybe 15 widgets (Individual) or 35 widgets (Designer) is a useful amount to start with. But what happens after the first year or two, when you are up to your limit? What happens when you have 60 live widgets out in the wild - there are no levels after 60 (except for a nebulous Agency structure). Do you have to start culling some widgets? Tell some clients that their widgets are going black?
It seems that what Sprout need is a far more flexible pricing structure, with the ability to add extra widgets on a one by one basis - and the ability to buy extra bandwidth if you need it.
Unfortunately, with the current setup I would find it hard to recommend using Sprout Builder in a professional capacity.

Can Widgets Save the Television Industry?

Can Widgets Save the Television Industry? - BusinessWeek

Convergence has been the buzzword of the media world for years now. But while mobile might have won many of the recent headlines, a groundswell of innovation is under way in the television industry. Not least are new initiatives spearheaded by Yahoo! (YHOO), Intel (INTC), and Samsung (SAME_pq.F), which aim to bring the Internet to a television near you.

Yahoo's Connected TV platform is now available on selected Samsung televisions, with sets to come later this year from Sony (SNE), LG, and Vizio, too. The overarching strategy seems to borrow heavily from Apple (AAPL), whose success with its iPhone App Store has rewritten the rule book for content and service providers in the phone industry. That's not the only similarity in the approach: The interface design of the Connected platform has been spearheaded by a former Apple interaction designer, Arlo Rose.

Artists Free Store

artblog

Setting up shop in a small storefront space, replete with credit card logos on the door, this venture includes an assortment of donations from friends and fellow artists -- and its all for free. Robles talked about the idea and about getting the original collection together and how the entire project had taken on an even greater meaning being near the center of commerce in this most economically challenging time.

They plan to distribute Free Store World Bills, as a global currency that potentially could be used at any free store in the Global Free Store chain. Contributors to Free Store will receive World Bills for goods and services donated to the store. They can then use these bills to trade with other participants or in future. 

How can they afford to do this? Of course it's not free -- they have partial sponsorship from The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and The September 11th Fund. Plenty of programming with this project--including Sunday afternoon In House Curator Events (Sundays 2-5 pm) with Edwin Ramoran, director of exhibitions and programs at Aljira Center for Contemporary Art. Get a 15-min. consultation with Ramoran on your project or proposal. To sign up, email doubleaprojects@gmail.com

Arts Counselling

My post on things for Liz Forgan to do when she arrives at the Arts Council has brought forth an established Arts Council blogger - with quite the best title for such a blog, Arts Counselling. I'm not sure how anyone else can top that title, but there must be more. Mustn't there? And some Twitterers? Social networkers? I've put in an email to the Communication Stalinists (to quote Mark) asking about who blogs and twitters and what their policy on such matters is - but of course Communications can't communicate. Actually, the top mans email bounced with a 'not known at this address' message. More on this anon.
In the meantime - Arts Counselling is a good start. Oh, and Mark's a poet as well as an ACE exec.

Arts Counselling

I'm Mark Robinson and I work for Arts Council England, as Executive Director, North East. This is not an official Arts Council website, but a space for me to share thoughts on arts policy, strategy and development. I'll also use it to share more widely things I write that might otherwise vanish, and to suggest sources of thinking and stimulation. I aim to post on here a couple of times a week but you know how life can get...

I also hope to show that people who work for the Arts Council, even Exec Directors, are not faceless, robotic bureaucrats - but maybe I am one and just don't realise it yet. As well as working for the Arts Council I am a widely-published poet and critic. You can read more about me in the Writers A-Z on http://www.literaturenortheast.co.uk/. That tells you everything else you'd ever want to know, and more.

RockYou Adds Video Ads To Widget Network

MediaPost Publications RockYou Adds Video Ads To Widget Network 02/03/2009

Aiming to boost ad revenue, RockYou is adding new video ad formats to its widget ad network that spans social networking and video sites including Facebook, MySpace and YouTube.

The Redwood City, Calif.-based startup said it developed the video ads for widgets in response to advertiser demand for a centralized way to deliver video ads across a range of social media platforms without having to customize ads for each.

Murdoch: Newspapers + Customized Content = Success

Josh Larson from Newsgator points out that Murdoch would seem to be praising widgets:

Murdoch: Newspapers + Customized Content = Success His Comments Strongly Make the Case for Widgets: NewsGator Widget Blog

Robert Murdoch, in comments from part of a lecture series sponsored by the Australian Broadcast Corporation, portrays the current environment for newspapers and media companies, not unsurprisingly, as difficult. In particular, he calls out "some of the [obsolete] editors, reporters, and proprietors who are forgetting a newspaper's most precious asset: the bond with its readers." However, Murdoch points to a potentially bright future for the space if newspapers and media companies can learn to adapt.

In short, Murdoch says that newspapers must embrace technology advances -- RSS content in particular -- to be successful in the changing media landscape. He believes that the key challenge for success in the future will be to "use a newspaper's brand while allowing readers to personalize the news for themselves-and then deliver it in the ways that they want."

These comments lend significant credence to the work we're doing here at NewsGator Media & Consumer Products with newspapers and media companies through RSS, widgets, and related content. In a general sense, the solutions that we offer at NewsGator help newspapers and media companies extend their brand's reach, improve traffic and monetization, and -- here's the key -- also enhance the end user's experience through dynamic (and often customizable) content delivery platforms.

Indeed, If you read between the lines of his comments, Murdoch makes a powerful case for precisely the type of viral widgets that NewsGator provides, by referring to the importance of tools that allow, "a newspaper's brand...[to] deliver [content] in the ways that [readers] want" by "allowing readers to personalize the news for themselves."

Gigya update for MySpace2.0 profiles

As you may know, MySpace users now have the option to upgrade to "Profile 2.0", a new design that gives members new ways to customize their profiles. For MySpace users, upgrading to Profile 2.0 is strictly an opt-in process, so some members will have 1.0 Profiles while others have 2.0 Profiles.  Successfully installing layouts for Profile 2.0 requires installing embed code into a new section (see here for more information).
 
In response, Gigya quickly developed features to make Wildfire compatible with Profile 2.0. Gigya's Wildfire now has the ability to determine the profile type of the user when installing a publisher's layout, and Wildfire will install the embed code into the correct section. If it is a 1.0 profile, the layout posts to the “about me” section. If it is a 2.0 profile, the process automatically switches the user to “no theme” to avoid running over MySpace’s new layout theme, adds the CSS content, and publishes it. If the user has a 1.0 Profile, and the layout provided by the Partner is 2.0, Wildfire will provide the user with feedback displayed within the UI.
 
As usual, Wildfire does not make any changes to the code on a user's page and partners will need to provide supported codes for each profile type (1.0 or 2.0).
 
Profile 2.0 also creates an issue for including links on layouts because the CSS box where users put the layout 2.0 code does not allow for HTML. To address this problem, we have also completed a feature that will allow partners to post a separate HTML link to the “About Me” section. When Wildfire posts a 2.0 layout it will post content to both the new CSS layout section and the “About Me” section. See below for implementation details.

The "I Voted" sticker as widget

FREE/Long Tail - Vote today and get free stuff!

Vote today and get free stuff!

CNET reports: Krispy Kreme is offering a free star-shaped donut (with patriotic sprinkles, no less) to anyone who shows up wearing an “I Voted” sticker. Other freebies you can score using that all-powerful sticker:

* A free tall coffee at Starbucks
* A free ice cream at Ben & Jerry’s from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.
* Some Chick-Fil-A stores are reportedly offering a free chicken sandwich.

js-kit raises $3.6, hires Chris Saad

Great to see the two K(C)hris's together properly now! And another widgety company raises proper funding in the teeth of a finance meltdown, double cheers all round. Here they are in New York following Widgety Goodness earlier this year.



Social Widget Provider JS-Kit Raises $3.6M @ JS-Kit Blog

Ensures Continued Innovation & Stability for its Web Publishers

* JS-Kit is a leading provider of lightweight social widgets with over 550,000 registered sites using it's hosted offerings, which include: Comments, Ratings, Product Reviews, & Polls.
* The services are easy for publishers to install, simple to customize, and are an extremely low cost alternative to in-house development.
* Web publishers seeking stability now have a "safe choice" for Web 2.0 services.
* Funding has already enabled expansion of the development team to a dozen engineers, a quadrupling of the size of the data center, and the addition of industry visionary Chris Saad (Co-Founder DataPortability) as a Strategic Advisor.
* Series B funding was led by Altos Ventures, with participation from Series A Investor TEF3.
* Contact: khris@js-kit.com.

Today I am proud to announce that JS-Kit has closed a Series B funding round totaling $3.6M. The round was led by Altos Ventures with participation from our Series A investor TEF3.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the JS-Kit team for their unwavering commitment and hard work. I'd also like to thank our friends and partners who use JS-Kit on their sites and send us detailed feedback for improving the product — your passion fuels our motivation to continue delivering great products.

In just two short years, JS-Kit has delivered a range of widgets that make sites more functional by encouraging social interaction. We have been proud to be part of the social media revolution and look forward to taking things to the next level in the coming months and years.

To that end, this round of funding will be used for a variety of purposes.

An expansion of our development team has already begun. We are now at 12 engineers and plan to continue to grow that team to support our growing user base.

To support our growth, we will broaden our leadership and management team with several important additions. I am very pleased to share that Chris Saad (Co-Founder of the DataPortability Project, Media 2.0 Workgroup and APML) has joined JS-Kit as a Strategic Advisor to the company (read his post here). Other key hires are in process and will be announced shortly.

Widget maker Gigya gets $11 million

Widget maker Gigya gets $11 million Series C

Looks like they're battening down the hatches: Social-network apphaus Gigya has raised $11 million in a Series C funding round led by DAG Ventures.

President and co-founder Rooly Eliezerov called it a "pre-emptive round" in a release Wednesday; the company's Series B round was only seven months ago. But Gigya insists that this new funding is to keep up demand, not to have some disaster insurance in the face of the current financial situation.

Still, economic crisis notwithstanding, Gigya and its brethren may still have a tough road ahead: Blogger Nick O'Neill recently found that traffic to a Facebook app he created tanked after the social network instituted a controversial redesign that relegates many third-party widgets to a "Boxes" tab.

Facebook's obviously not the only platform for social widgets, but it's been the poster child for apps ever since the Facebook Platform made its debut in May 2007. Could it be a bellwether for the industry? Absolutely.