Monday, August 25, 2008

Best Buy Sara Moulton Episode Reminder

Best Buy Sara Moulton Episode Reminder
Don't want to miss an episode of “Making Your Kitchen Cook”? You don't have to. Download this Widget, and you'll know the minute a new episode is served up.

Redefining the Widget

Redefining the Widget
Last year at Widgets Live, the announcement of the SpringWidgets platform redefined what a widget could be. At the time of our launch there were three categories of widgets: desktop widgets, web widgets and a special subsection of web widgets that would work on social networking profiles.

We changed all that by inventing a widget platform that allowed for the first time, the ability to use a single, updatable and configurable widget file to reach all of these destinations. We took it further by incorporating in the ability to “pop” any SpringWidget you find on the web onto your desktop with just one click.

Since our release, there have been a few companies that have announced a similar product offering - YourMinis and Netvibes are examples we feel are well done.

I'm going to give you a little sneak peak behind the curtain where we are quietly working on redefining the widget once again, and perhaps in the process spur another round of inspiration.

For the most part, online widgets have been exactly what the limited definition has made them out to be …

A web widget is a portable chunk of code that can be installed and executed within any separate HTML-based web page by an end user without requiring additional compilation.

Thanks Wikipedia

Reading this, I’m thinking about the widget landscape and in my head I’m starting to challenge the entire box that we have collectively put widgets into, trying to look past the simple definition and look at the transformative nature of what a portable chunk of code can do.

Is the widget just a visitor on the web page or can it be much more and control and interact with the web page it’s on? If widgets are like parasites, can a parasite define the host?

Can a widget be a portable “experience?”

Envision if you will a Widget that no longer sends the user off to another site to personalize itself. Imagine a widget that is not content to stay within the confines of it’s own little box, but rather can interact with the page it lives on. The “Transformative Widget” would take over the page it’s on; integrating it's content within that page and transforming it based on a click.

If the Widget is not just a chunk of code, but rather a portable experience, imagine the infinite ways we can expand the brand experience within the social network itself. Moving code and embedding Widgets can create a better way to immerse the user in an extreme brand experience. The widget then becomes an ad that is user embedded, user selected and more powerfully engaging and interactive than any traditional advertisement that is available - and just as performance oriented.

If a user allows the widget to brand the entire page, is that a "Widgetview", an "Ad Impression", or a "Pageview"?

So if SpringWidgets is ready to challenge the Widget Landscape it’s safe to say that the launch of THE FANTASTIC FOUR Widget is the next step in redefining the Widget. The transformative nature of TFF Widget is completely apparent once you start using it on your MySpace profile and the brand experience is more immersive than anything possible with a widget prior to the Fantastic Four widget launch.

This is only one of the many transformative widgets that we are engaged in and only represents a small amount of our R&D efforts. Over the weeks and months to come, we'll be rolling out some truly fantastic products that will not only transform the widget, but transform SpringWidgets as well.

We would love to have you on board as we make these transformations, so please feel free to download our API and put your own thoughts to work in redefining what a widget can be.

Welcome FineTune!

SpringWidgets welcomes it's first third-party developer uploaded SpringWidget.

Only days after our silent launch of widget uploading, Tony MacDonnell and the rest of the team from Teknision have uploaded a Finetune widget, the first on our platform not built internally.

I have to say that I'm really impressed! The combination of a comprehensive music library, the ability to set a 45 song playlist and being viral is a killer idea. I was able to find all the songs that I wanted to add to create a playlist that truly reflected my musical tastes.

The interface for the widget is fantastic and fun. When you have a song selected, the album art is displayed in a style that looks like a row of CDs sitting in a shelf. It reminds me of the very cool "coverflow" effect that Apple recently put into iTunes.

Of course, with the age of songs that I like, a stack of records metaphor might have been more appropriate ;-)

Here is my live SpringWidget, go ahead and play around:



I've added this widget on my personal blog and my MySpace profile to give it a whirl and I'm very happy with the results. While the size of the widget is not configurable, it's designed at a size that fits nicely into the music section on Myspace and almost any blog sidebar.

What does Tony have to say about developing on the SpringWidgets platform? - I pulled the following quote from his blog:

"We've used WidgetBox, Yahoo Widgets, Google Gadgets, OSX Dashboard, and so far the Springbox was the most fun, and rendered the coolest final product at the end of the day."

Of course, the real cool thing for FineTune is that they were able to make it down to the desktop months before Adobe Apollo is to become available and they made it there with SpringWidgets. This begs the question: "were there already footprints on the moon when Neil Armstrong landed?"

We are very glad to have FineTune, Tony and his Teknision team on board with SpringWidgets, and we love the product they have built. Go ahead and give it a try and see if you like it as much as we do!

-Don read more

Feed Compare Feedburner subscriber graphs

A large number of blogs and other sites now use Feedburner as it has a number of great Pro freatures and Feedburner also allows you to transfer feed ownership between users. Whilst you can see your stats in Feedburner the graphs are not that great and you can compare them.

There is a site called Feed Compare that allows you to view the RSS subscriber data for up to 4 feeds on a single graph. This means you could compare your competitors RSS subscriber count with your own feed.

To allow you to get a better idea of subscriber numbers you can also view a graph showing data for the last month, quarter, half year, year or 2 years assuming the feed has been in existence for that long.

The reason this is such a great tool is that you can now find out exactly how a sites RSS feed has grown over time. All you need is the sites Feedburner URL which you can get by right clicking on the sites RSS feed icon and copying the URL than pasting it into Feed Compare.

This post is from the Newsniche website and should not be reproduced elsewhere. Why not subscribe to the RSS feed and get this information delivered straight to your News reader.

read more

foo removefromqueue 1.0 (Freeware)

foo removefromqueue is a lightweight and usefulllows one to remove items from the playback queue with context menu/shortcut key. read more

Open Tech Mac Clone Company Wants To Sell Itself For $50,000 [Open Tech]

Open Tech Mac Clone Company Wants To Sell Itself For $50,000 [Open Tech]
It's only been three weeks since the Mac "clone" company Open Tech made its debut, but it's already putting itself up for sale for $50,000. In an email on July 20, their Vice President Elijah Samaroo...

iHologram 3D iPhone App Was Just For Show, Not Peek into Alternate World [Ihologram App Not Real]

The amazingly convincing 3D anamorphosis app iHologram we showed on Friday turns out to be just a technology demonstrator rendering rather than a real app. Its developer, David O'Reilly, apparently... read more

Print/Print Preview 0.6 (Freeware)

Print/Print Preview 0.6 (Freeware)
Replace the default Firefox Print button with the Mozilla Suite style Print/Print Preview toolbar button/menu

Security Center Lite 1.3.9 (Trial)

Security Center Lite 1.3.9 (Trial)
This security software will monitor network traffic and protect you from potential intruders.

2008 West Virginia Mountaineers Football Schedule Widget 4.0

Clicking the West Virginia logo displays the Mountaineers Football Schedule with kickoff date, time, TV and scores from previous games.
About 2008 West Virginia Mountaineers Football Schedule Widget
Instant automated access to the latest West Virginia kick-off and schedule information for the 2008 West Virginia Mountaineers football games. All games are listed with the date and time, home or away, TV scheduling plus the scores from the previously played games.

- Team logo hot link to the team’s Official Athletic Web Site for the absolute latest information on scheduling.
- Button to play West Virginia Fight Song.

Let’s Gooooo Mountaineeers!
read more

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Redefining the Widget

Last year at Widgets Live, the announcement of the SpringWidgets platform redefined what a widget could be. At the time of our launch there were three categories of widgets: desktop widgets, web widgets and a special subsection of web widgets that would work on social networking profiles.

We changed all that by inventing a widget platform that allowed for the first time, the ability to use a single, updatable and configurable widget file to reach all of these destinations. We took it further by incorporating in the ability to “pop” any SpringWidget you find on the web onto your desktop with just one click.

Since our release, there have been a few companies that have announced a similar product offering - YourMinis and Netvibes are examples we feel are well done.

I'm going to give you a little sneak peak behind the curtain where we are quietly working on redefining the widget once again, and perhaps in the process spur another round of inspiration.

For the most part, online widgets have been exactly what the limited definition has made them out to be …

A web widget is a portable chunk of code that can be installed and executed within any separate HTML-based web page by an end user without requiring additional compilation.

Thanks Wikipedia

Reading this, I’m thinking about the widget landscape and in my head I’m starting to challenge the entire box that we have collectively put widgets into, trying to look past the simple definition and look at the transformative nature of what a portable chunk of code can do.

Is the widget just a visitor on the web page or can it be much more and control and interact with the web page it’s on? If widgets are like parasites, can a parasite define the host?

Can a widget be a portable “experience?”

Envision if you will a Widget that no longer sends the user off to another site to personalize itself. Imagine a widget that is not content to stay within the confines of it’s own little box, but rather can interact with the page it lives on. The “Transformative Widget” would take over the page it’s on; integrating it's content within that page and transforming it based on a click.

If the Widget is not just a chunk of code, but rather a portable experience, imagine the infinite ways we can expand the brand experience within the social network itself. Moving code and embedding Widgets can create a better way to immerse the user in an extreme brand experience. The widget then becomes an ad that is user embedded, user selected and more powerfully engaging and interactive than any traditional advertisement that is available - and just as performance oriented.

If a user allows the widget to brand the entire page, is that a "Widgetview", an "Ad Impression", or a "Pageview"?

So if SpringWidgets is ready to challenge the Widget Landscape it’s safe to say that the launch of THE FANTASTIC FOUR Widget is the next step in redefining the Widget. The transformative nature of TFF Widget is completely apparent once you start using it on your MySpace profile and the brand experience is more immersive than anything possible with a widget prior to the Fantastic Four widget launch.

This is only one of the many transformative widgets that we are engaged in and only represents a small amount of our R&D efforts. Over the weeks and months to come, we'll be rolling out some truly fantastic products that will not only transform the widget, but transform SpringWidgets as well.

We would love to have you on board as we make these transformations, so please feel free to download our API and put your own thoughts to work in redefining what a widget can be. read more

ExpressWidgets from SpringWidgets!

It’s a day to “Express” change . . .

Today we’ve launched our ExpressWidgets service…

http://springwidgets.com/express/getFeed/

Up until now you could use our RSS Reader Widget to brand and add a blog to your site or desktop, but you could not add that finished blog widget to our gallery so that other people could find it and share it.

Today we changed all that!!!

As of right now you can use our ExpressWidgets process to create your own uniquely-branded Widget(s) and have those widgets instantly added to our gallery just like any other widget. Build as many as you want and add them to our growing gallery of blogs and desktop Widgets so other users can embed, pass along and bring them to the desktop.

It’s pretty cool. We “expressed” the RSS Reader first. We think it’s the easiest build process for you to quickly syndicate and distribute your blog or audio and video podcast content. Best of all, you can uniquely brand your ExpressWidget to match your website or blog, making it a truly one-of-a-kind Widget out in the WidgetSphere.

To make sure that the end product is as good as it can be, we've added a new way to customize an Express RSS Reader - you can now skin the "chrome" around the content so that it better matches your blog or site. (This is a feature that has been requested for a while and we are happy to be able to push this feature live today).

And for our many Feedburner users, your burned feeds will continue to give you the industry leading analytics and metrics for which Feedburner is known. If you have your Feedburner feed handy, drop on in to the ExpressWidgets process now and add your blog to our gallery to get some free exposure.

Talking about exposure… We’ve also added in a few familiar buttons on the display pages for your widget. Anyone can now Digg, Reddit, Del.icio.us and otherwise bookmark your widget directly from the widget view in the gallery – guaranteed to lead to at least a couple of hundred eyeballs on your content ;-)

Go get’em tiger! read more

Cox Communications Getting Into The Wireless Business [Cellphones]

Cox communications, one of the top three cable companies in the US, is planning on making a foray into the wireless business with an offering that integrates all of their services into one device.... read more

Kinara widget for Kwanzaa is here!

Kinara widget for Kwanzaa is here!
We're finished the Kinara widget for Kwanzaa!!!!

A new candle is lit for each day of Kwanzaa. Click on "Get this widget" to put it on your page!


Trend Micro Virus Pattern File 5.487.00 (Freeware)

Trend Micro Virus Pattern File 5.487.00 (Freeware)
Trend Micro Pattern File contains Virus Pattern Files with latest virus databases

Readit Widget 1.1

Readit Widget 1.1
Train yourself to read faster with this handy widget.
About Readit Widget
The average reading speed is around 200 to 250 words per minute. With this widget you can routinely read at 600 words per minute, and with a little training you can go much faster.

PsychWidget 1.0

PsychWidget 1.0
Shows the latest psychology-related news from around the world, lets you search thousands of psychology links, and more.
About PsychWidget
Designed for students, professionals, and members of the public interested in psychology. With this widget, you can see the latest psychology-related news stories from around the world, search thousands of psychology web links and news items, visit interactive forums, and more.

PsychWidget was developed by SocialPsychology.org with funding from the National Science Foundation.

The best way to get your band's blog on Myspace.

While I was looking through the widget analytics data the other day, I noticed just how many bands are using our RSS reader to deliver news to their fans into social networks like Myspace and Facebook and start pages like iGoogle, Netvibes and Pageflakes.


Grab this Led Zeppelin widget now.
Of course, I'm going to show my age here, but I had to ask who Timbaland, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony and Rich Boy were, and I had no clue about The Wreckers, Robin Thicke or Faith Hill but when I found out that the official Beastie Boys, Led Zeppelin and Michael Jackson's Thriller profiles were using our widgets I had to spread the word.

Admittedly, Timbaland may get a bit more play these days, but I spent so much time listening to my Zeppelin albums and tapes that I wore them out. And the Beastie boys Licensed to Ill was awesome and played non-stop while cruising in my 66 Mustang in the 80's. (I really am old)

If you have a band, take a look at how some of the other artists I mentioned above implemented the widgets on their Myspace pages and feel free to use our widgets or our platform to promote your own news or events to your fans.

We don't charge for bands to use our RSS reaader, so it's probably the lowest cost investment that you'll make in your popularity. If you are feeling generous, we'll take concert tickets, CD's and backstage passes if you have any to spare ;-)



If you are a band and add a SpringWidgets express RSS reader to your page to promote your website or blog, please add a comment below and let us know where to find it.

Rock on and build your own RSS express widget today. read more

Avira Antivir Virus Definition File Update - 7.00.06.38 | 19 Aug 2008 (Freeware)

Avira Antivir Virus Definition File Update - 7.00.06.38 | 19 Aug 2008 (Freeware)
Download the Virus Definition File to always keep Avira AntiVir up-to-date

Archos Gen-6 5G PMP is 3G Web Surfing, HD Video, Touchscreen Beauty [PMPs]

Archos just revealed what that curtain tease was all about: the 6th Gen Archos 5, 5G and 7 series PMPs. The 4.8" flagship 5G ditches the tired interface and buttons of the Gen-5 device for a slick UI... read more

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Task Coach 0.70.2 (GPL)

A simple open source manager designed to help you manage personal tasks and todo lists read more

Countdown to E for All Expo

Countdown to Video Game Expo 2008 read more

SpringWidgets loves iGoogle

SpringWidgets loves iGoogle
There is a lot of press today on Google Homepages... oops... I mean "iGoogle"

Since we at SpringWidgets are really big fans of Google and everything they do. I thought this would be a great time to officially say how much we love the iGoogle page by letting everyone know that we have recently added in support for automatic posting of all SpringWidgets into your personalized iGoogle page!

Just choose the widget you are interested in, configure it however you like it to look and function and then select the Google icon in the share it box.

The whole process takes only a few seconds and is one of the easiest ways to put one of our widgets on a page that we have available. Way to go Google!

With all the recent focus on widgets, it's not surprising that everyone is building a widget destination of some sort. We at SpringWidgets will continue to build support for each new destination as APIs become available and look forward to helping enable 2007 truly being the year of the widget.

Here is my iGoogle page. Complete with today's MLB games and a countdown to the next episode of NBC's Heroes!

We've Got Widgets!

As anyone following the site can see, we've put a few new widgets in the gallery since last week.

We've added widgets from the NBC Show Heroes, Harper Collins Booksellers, American Idol, Rotten Tomatoes, Ask Men, Fox Sports, Career One, 20th Century Fox, FX, Speed Channel, News.com.au, and about a couple hundred of your own customized ExpressWidgets!

Heroes

How cool is it that SpringWidgets is driving the viral widget on the official Heroes MySpace page! I don't know if you are a fan, but here at SpringWidgets, we are all fans of Heroes and this is one of the only shows that we refuse to miss!

Look through our gallery and you might also discover a Heroes feed in an ExpressWidget or two!

Harper Collins
Take a look at the upcoming books section of Harper Collins Booksellers. Every upcoming book they offer will sport a widget that you can take with you to count down to the release of your favorite upcoming book.

ExpressWidgets in the house!
Even though it's only been a week since we had our soft launch of the ExpressWidgets beta, we're being bombarded with new widgets. My guess is that even with the tens of thousands of SpringWidgets RSS Readers that were created before we introduced the new process, we'll see this gallery grow rapidly.

For those of you who were brave enough to jump on board right away and found a thing or two that you would like changed about the express widgets process, we've been listening! We've upgraded the profiles so that they now show the widgets that you have "expressed" and we've also built in an "edit" and a "delete" feature for your widget in case you have a change of heart after you've published.

Simply log in using the button on the upper right of this page to view and edit the widgets that you have in our system - you can change the default size, header image, gallery tile and color of the widget using your edit page.

American Idol chose to have our technology drive a few bobbling heads made especially for their contestants. Now you too can put a Sanjaya Bobbler on your blog. Check out their site for more information

If you have a few minutes, take a stroll through our gallery and take a look at the variety of creative and colorful solutions that have been added. Chances are that you'll find quite a few that you can add to your page or blog.

This has been a busy couple of weeks here, and we have pushed out quite a few new widgets and features. We're hard at work on some other stuff too that quite honestly blows the doors off any other widget platform out there, bar none. But more on that later . . . read more

TVNavigator

Have you ever looked at the TV Guide? Tried to find interesting shows? Was it tedious? Do you want a faster way to find new / interesting shows? TVNavigator is the solution for you. It allows you to Filter channels, Color favorites channels and shows, But the most important: It allows you to filter out recurrent shows, TV listings are full of them, actually more then 85% of the shows are repeated shows! What if you could filter all of the repeated shows? (Well the ones you know you do not want to see) You will see just the shows that are new (and the ones you did not filtered out) In a matter of seconds you can browse your TV Guide. All you need to do is sit down for one hour, go over the TV Guide and filter-out shows Go over a week of listing - no pain no gain :) After that, whenever you see a show you do not like, filter it out - after the first cycle, It will be very easy to do. You won't have much work to do. (NEW) You can even print your own TV Guide, but not the one with million boring shows that you can buy everywhere, a TV guide with Just the shows you did not filter-out. It will even color your favorite shows. Now you can take the "TVNavigator" to the train with you! (NEW) you can set alerts, and get notifed before a show starts. If you are a TV fanatic this is the Widget for you. read more

Spiderman gets on the Express train.


Sony Pictures decided to put out an express widget for the upcoming Spiderman 3 movie.

Being a long time comic book collector, I can completely understand the excitement surrounding this film and am looking forward to seeing this one on the big screen at the local Imax probably more than any of you are.

While you are waiting through the last few days prior to the release, be sure to grab this widget and follow the news leading up to the opening weekend.

Remember, "With great power comes great responsibility!"

Of course, this Spiderman widget is so cool, I had to mash one up myself! as did EJRavin, another of our ExpressWidgets users. Good job EJ! read more

Dad Nails Xbox to Tree, Cleverly Gets on Master Chief's Bad Side [Xbox Tree]

Dad Nails Xbox to Tree, Cleverly Gets on Master Chief's Bad Side [Xbox Tree]
I think that, in any tough situation, there's a kind of normal way a person can react and a completely angry, psycho, absurd way a person can react. The normal way is the best way about 99.99% of the...

Football widgets are in season!

With football season fast approaching, now is the best time to put the spotlight on our Sports Scoreboard widget and the NFL Gametrax widget. These two widgets are quite possibly the best sports focused widgets ever built. At least that's what our moms say ;-)

The Gametrax widget pulls in all the currently playing games for the NFL and displays them complete with play by play action and game leaders! (can you say fantasy?)

That's a live Gametrax widget to the left, clicking on the "game" tab will show you the play by play action if there is a game currently being played.

Our Scoreboard widget pulls in a complete list of all games playing complete with live scores for the NFL (excluding preseason), MLB, NBA, NHL, College Football and College Basketball leagues.

The great thing about the Scoreboard widget is that it can be dynamically sized. It will drop down as small as 160 pixels wide so that it will fit on most blog sidebars. If you have a sports blog, this is really the best way to share scores with your readers.

The scoreboard widget set to 160 pixels wide for blog sidebar placement. You can also set the default league shown to be MLB, NFL, NHL, NBA, CBK or CFB
Each league in the scoreboard gets yesterday's, tomorrow's and today's games in a tabbed format and you can set the initial display of the widget to default to any of those tabs for any league when the widget first loads.

In the yesterday tab, the final game scores along with a win/loss indicator on each team shows you quickly who was on top. Tomorrow's tab shows the game time and teams playing so that you can better plan which sports bar to visit to watch the most games at once, and the today tab shows off live in game scores on all games in the list complete with some in game leader information.

Now for the really cool info... For those of you who have our desktop application installed, the scoreboard widget really begins to shine after you download it.

Flip to the preference panel in the desktop sports Scoreboard widget and enable "docking" and you'll be able to drag the widget to the sidebar for all day sports tracking ability even when your work apps are open.

Take a few minutes and play with the widgets and feel free to use them for your desktop, blog or social network profile. If you think our moms are right and these are the best sports widgets that have ever been built, let us know.

If you are interested in more sports related widgets, search the gallery for sports. So far we have 109 sports related widgets that have been created ranging everywhere from Ask Men's Health and Sports News to the Worland Middle School Sports Schedule.

-Don

click the thumbnail to see what the Scoreboard looks like when docked on your desktop.
read more

ImTOO Zune Converter Suite 5.0.99.0806 (Demo)

ImTOO Zune Converter Suite 5.0.99.0806 (Demo)
Rips DVDs to Zune and converts video to Zune

TheDashboard 0.1

Enhance your Dashboard. Get more widgets.
About TheDashboard
Fresh new Widgets for your Dashboard
read more

Critical Bug Fixed: "'mt_pluginmanager' doesn't exist"

Critical Bug Fixed: "'mt_pluginmanager' doesn't exist"
It took me far too long to track down a simple error a number of people were reporting with Plugin Manager, but I did track it down, and did finally manage to fix it. Long story short, the deployment mechanism...

ASAP Utilities 4.2.6 (Trial)

ASAP Utilities 4.2.6 (Trial)
A powerful Excel add-in that fills the gaps in Excel and automates frequently used tasks

Vivid Gallery of High Speed Photography [Photography]

Vivid Gallery of High Speed Photography [Photography]
No, high speed photography is by no means a new idea; we just very much enjoyed this Flickr collection by user nebarnix. A large gallery of objects frozen in motion with a 500-nanosecond flash, a...

Facebook Climbing to 3rd Spot

The October data are in! Facebook is continuing its amazing climb, taking the 3rd spot away from Del.icio.us. Favorites are back, stealing the first position from Google Bookmarks. Again, Favorites here means “browser bookmarking”, for any browser. On the Feed Reader front things are much more quiet. There was almost no changes between September [...]

The October data are in!

Facebook is continuing its amazing climb, taking the 3rd spot away from Del.icio.us. Favorites are back, stealing the first position from Google Bookmarks. Again, Favorites here means “browser bookmarking”, for any browser. On the Feed Reader front things are much more quiet. There was almost no changes between September and October.

Top Bookmarking/Sharing - October 2007

Top Feed Readers - October 2007

read more

How to display your RSS subscriber count

You've all seen the little FeedBurner subscriber counters on sites that display a site or more often a blogs number of RSS subscribers. Whilst this is a nice widget to display on your site there isn't much in the way of customizing to display something different.

Plaint text subscriber count

There is a way to display the number of readers you have for your feed by using FeedBurners API. This means you can display your subscriber count within some text, for example as part of a blog post. You could also have a separate message somewhere on you site saying X number of readers subscribe to this site.

You can use the PHP code below. You need to have PHP5 otherwise the SimpleXMLElement command will not work.

//get cool feedburner count
$whaturl="http://api.feedburner.com/awareness/1.0/GetFeedData?uri=YourFeedburnerFeedLinkHere";

//Initialize the Curl session
$ch = curl_init();

//Set curl to return the data instead of printing it to the browser.
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
//Set the URL
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $whaturl);
//Execute the fetch
$data = curl_exec($ch);
//Close the connection
curl_close($ch);

$xml = new SimpleXMLElement($data);
$fb = $xml->feed->entry['circulation'];

//end get cool feedburner count
?>

The next line of PHP needs to be located where you want the subscriber count number to appear. This code needs to occur after the code above for it to work.

I borrowed this code from Mark over at 45n5 so thanks Mark.

This post is from the Newsniche website and should not be reproduced elsewhere. Why not subscribe to the RSS feed and get this information delivered straight to your News reader.

read more

Adding an Item to Your Queue

From anywhere within Media Manager you can add another item to your queue. Click on the "Add Item" link in the left hand menu, or the "Add Item to your Queue" found on the main Media Manager screen. From... read more

Mini Corvette Engine Runs at 11,000 RPM [Scale Model]

Mini Corvette Engine Runs at 11,000 RPM [Scale Model]
It may not sound much different that a weed-whacker, but I can assure you that if this 1/6 scale replica of the 1964 Corvette L76 327 cubic-inch V8 was put into a tiny car, it would give a Leprechaun...

Upcoming Prototype This! TV Show Sounds Like Modders, Maker's Geekfest [Hackers]

Hackaday has a piece about an upcoming Discovery Channel show called "Prototype this!" It's due in October, and since it's about making and modding robots and other gizmos, it sounds like a... read more

Cool show, Cool Widget!

Cool show, Cool Widget!
If you haven't taken a look at the show "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia", now is the time. This show is awesome in the way that "The Office" is awesome. It's a brilliant comedy about four friends who own a bar who almost universally approach every problem with the wrong solution. If I had only one word to describe the show, it would have to be "Great!"


The widget is perfectly sized for a blog post, or placement on a Myspace profile and has tons of show related content and links.



Click the options to share this now, it's a live widget!
BIG Interactive and FX Networks created a SpringWidget to help promote the show.

Like the show, the widget is great as well. There are video clips to watch, Sunny tour dates, show information and links to the polls, website and Sunny Blog and even a sneak peak video.

I had never watched this show before seeing the widget, but the widget provided me with enough video and information about the show to let me know that I had to go out and buy the first season DVD set. I didn't realize until after I was at home watching one of the episodes that a "widget" had convinced me to buy the show. I had not even visit the website before I made the purchase.

The best part of the Sunny widget is that the developers at BIG Interactive really took advantage of our platform, building in some features that are only available when the widget is downloaded. So while the online widget is cool, only users who grab it as a download get the full experience.

Download the desktop widget and you get a second widget hidden in the right click menu made to look like the star characters. This second widget is not available online.

You can click and drag the widget by the characters "head" and some pretty neat physics take place, they wiggle and bounce off the side of your monitor. when the character stops, some pretty hilarious video clips start to play.

If you are reading this on a Thursday for the next few months, including This Thursday (tonight) the show should be airing on your local FX network. Take my word for it, it's worth watching.

-Don

p.s. You can find out more about BIG Interactive here and more about FX Networks here

We've Got Widgets!

We've Got Widgets!
As anyone following the site can see, we've put a few new widgets in the gallery since last week.

We've added widgets from the NBC Show Heroes, Harper Collins Booksellers, American Idol, Rotten Tomatoes, Ask Men, Fox Sports, Career One, 20th Century Fox, FX, Speed Channel, News.com.au, and about a couple hundred of your own customized ExpressWidgets!

Heroes

How cool is it that SpringWidgets is driving the viral widget on the official Heroes MySpace page! I don't know if you are a fan, but here at SpringWidgets, we are all fans of Heroes and this is one of the only shows that we refuse to miss!

Look through our gallery and you might also discover a Heroes feed in an ExpressWidget or two!

Harper Collins
Take a look at the upcoming books section of Harper Collins Booksellers. Every upcoming book they offer will sport a widget that you can take with you to count down to the release of your favorite upcoming book.

ExpressWidgets in the house!
Even though it's only been a week since we had our soft launch of the ExpressWidgets beta, we're being bombarded with new widgets. My guess is that even with the tens of thousands of SpringWidgets RSS Readers that were created before we introduced the new process, we'll see this gallery grow rapidly.

For those of you who were brave enough to jump on board right away and found a thing or two that you would like changed about the express widgets process, we've been listening! We've upgraded the profiles so that they now show the widgets that you have "expressed" and we've also built in an "edit" and a "delete" feature for your widget in case you have a change of heart after you've published.

Simply log in using the button on the upper right of this page to view and edit the widgets that you have in our system - you can change the default size, header image, gallery tile and color of the widget using your edit page.

American Idol chose to have our technology drive a few bobbling heads made especially for their contestants. Now you too can put a Sanjaya Bobbler on your blog. Check out their site for more information

If you have a few minutes, take a stroll through our gallery and take a look at the variety of creative and colorful solutions that have been added. Chances are that you'll find quite a few that you can add to your page or blog.

This has been a busy couple of weeks here, and we have pushed out quite a few new widgets and features. We're hard at work on some other stuff too that quite honestly blows the doors off any other widget platform out there, bar none. But more on that later . . .

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Awesome Photo Gallery/Google Maps Mashup

Awesome Photo Gallery/Google Maps Mashup
I recently was contacted by James Sanders who created a really cool Photo Gallery and Google Maps Mashup. They installed and customized the Photo Gallery Plugin such that a little thumb tack is displayed on a map of the world...

RSS Hugger

RSS Hugger

Collin LaHay has come up with an idea called RSSHugger, it's a site that allows webmasters to promote their RSS feeds by adding them to the site. You can add your own page but it will cost you 20US dollars (10 is you blog about RSSHugger).

RSS Hugger seems to be a cross between an RSS directory and a wiki. Collin wants the directory to grow to 50,000 blogs which he claims is 0.00045 percent of the blogosphere.

The idea behind the new site is to create buzz and generate new RSS subscribers for RSS feeds that are added to the site. When you buy a page you basically get your feed headlines displayed on your own page within RSSHugger. Whether or not enough buzz is created to generate any new subscribers to members feeds remains to be seen.

This post is from the Newsniche website and should not be reproduced elsewhere. Why not subscribe to the RSS feed and get this information delivered straight to your News reader.


Samsung Working With Developers To Optimize Solid State Drive Performance In Operating Systems [Solid State Drives]

Samsung is working with software developers to increase the performance of Solid State Drives for computers using the Sun's ZFS file system, which the next version of OSX Server, aka Snow Leopard,... read more

The value of an RSS subscriber at 30 dollars

Have you ever wondered how much each subscriber to your RSS feed is worth. Well according to Mark over at 45n5 that magic number is currently $30. Mark arrived at this figure by dividing the price blogs have recently sold for by the number of subscribers to the blog.

I have previously made predictions about RSS playing a more important role back in October 2006. It looks like RSS is now an important metric to measure the success of a site and it is also starting to play a larger role in deciding the monetary value of a blog.

RSS subscribers and their value

Although Mark's use of RSS as a measurement of value was just a bit of fun it does show that RSS is a valued metric. A year ago most webmasters and readers would not have placed much if any value in the number of subscribers you have.

As RSS becomes a more valued metric the value of the RSS feed itself will grow. There are going to be more advertisers willing to buy advertising in an RSS feed and the value of RSS will grow. This is because many RSS subscribers do not click through to the website itself but use the feed to consume the content.

This post is from the Newsniche website and should not be reproduced elsewhere. Why not subscribe to the RSS feed and get this information delivered straight to your News reader.

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Disaster Alert Map Shows Where the World is Ending [IDRC]

Until I loaded up this realtime Global Disaster Alert Map operated by the International Disaster and Risk Conference, which tracks biological hazards, chemical spills, fires, volcanoes, earthquakes... read more

Speaking at WordCamp San Francisco Next Weekend

I will be speaking at WordCamp San Francisco next week, covering 260 Ways to Break WordPress and asking WordPress fans for their tips and techniques for breaking WordPress, and putting it back together again. What about you? Have you broken WordPress? How? The line up of speakers for next weekend’s one-day event is the best of [...]

I will be speaking at WordCamp San Francisco next week, covering 260 Ways to Break WordPress and asking WordPress fans for their tips and techniques for breaking WordPress, and putting it back together again. What about you? Have you broken WordPress? How?

The line up of speakers for next weekend’s one-day event is the best of the best and I’m so honored to be among them. They include:

With plenty more brilliant minds sharing their WordPress, blogging, SEO, and business tips and tricks and wisdom.

There will be a WordPress Genius Bar to get personal one-on-one WordPress help and advice on Saturday, and I’ll be pitching in to help out.

On Sunday, there is a special fundraising charity event for 826 Valencia, a non-profit that helps students with their writing skills, called the WordPress Charity Scavenger Hunt. I’ve signed up with one of my dearest friends who lives in San Francisco and knows it like the back of her hand, so the rest of you scavengers watch out. I’ll be playing with a stacked deck! (Want to be on my team? :D )

There is still time to register for WordCamp 2008. I can’t wait for the WordPress event of the year. Hope to see you there.

You can see last year’s talk I gave at WordCamp 2007 to get you warmed up.



Site Search Tags: wordcamp, wordcamp 2008, wordcamp san francisco, wordcxamp2008, san francisco, wordpress scavenger hunt, wordpress fundraiser, speakers, speaking, event, wordpress news, wordpress events, wordpress community

Feed on Lorelle on WordPress Subscribe Feedburner iconVia Feedburner Subscribe by Email Visit
Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

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Checking your own RSS feeds

Checking your own RSS feeds

Are you checking your own RSS feeds, are you subscribed to your own feeds. If not then how do you know your feed is working properly. This is something I have come across, I have noticed on both my own and other bloggers feeds that sometimes your feed breaks.

The simplest thing you can do is subscribe to your feed in your feed reader. Create a separate folder to accommodate just your own feeds so you know exactly where they are. Now every time you make a post your new post will appear in your feed reader.

When you do your usual daily RSS trawl you will be reminded to check your feed. If there is anything amiss you will know about it sooner rather than later. I have emailed many a webmaster to tell them that their feed is broken. I mean who reads their own feeds, right.

This post is from the Newsniche website and should not be reproduced elsewhere. Why not subscribe to the RSS feed and get this information delivered straight to your News reader.


In.com

In.com
In.com Widget All In one

Check out our Christmas Tree widget!!

We thought everyone could use a Christmas Tree widget that counts down the days (like you need more reminding of how fast it is approaching)!

Go to the Christmas Tree page on the site http://springwidgets.com/widgets/view/46 to get your own tree for your page or to pop to your desktop. It can be configured to your liking. We're working on a Menorah and Kwanzaa also . . . keep checking back!

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Friday, August 8, 2008

Lightning Review: Brando's Power Station iPhone Charger [Review]

The Gadget: Brando's Power Station, a portable battery pack for your iPhone that slides easily into your dock connection for charging away from a socket or a USB connection. The Power Station, in... read more

Amazing DSI Brain Scanning Visualizes Your Mind's Inner Workings In 3D [This Is Your Brain]

Amazing DSI Brain Scanning Visualizes Your Mind's Inner Workings In 3D [This Is Your Brain]
What's that monkey thinking about when he's mushing down that banana or tossing feces at you? Well, you're looking at it—this is a map of where a macaque's thoughts live. It's made possible by new 3D...

WordPress 2.6.1 Beta 1 / 2.3 (GPL)

WordPress 2.6.1 Beta 1 / 2.3 (GPL)
A free and useful state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform

VS.Php for Visual Studio 2005 2.5.3.4907 (Trial)

VS.Php for Visual Studio 2005 2.5.3.4907 (Trial)
The php editor for Visual Studio 2005 developers

Suunto Core Watch Provides Perfect Weather Data For Outdoor Adventures [Outdoorsmen]

Suunto Core Watch Provides Perfect Weather Data For Outdoor Adventures [Outdoorsmen]
When you're out of wireless range but you really need to know the upcoming weather—say camping or other outdoor activities—you can use the Suunto Core watch to get your meteorological...

AMD OverDrive 2.1.2 (Freeware)

Maximize the capability, flexibility, and adjustability of the AMD chipset products read more

Diskeeper 2008 Pro Premier 12.0.781-t (Trial)

Diskeeper 2008 Pro Premier 12.0.781-t (Trial)
Adds the proprietary Intelligent File Access Acceleration Sequencing Technology to Diskeeper Pro

Grandprix.com 0.1

F1 Grandprix.com news.
About Grandprix.com
Get fast and fresh F1 Grandprix.com news in your Dashboard!
read more

Forthcoming Nokia N85 Slider Looks Like It's Getting U.S. 3G [Fcc]

Nokia loves to tempt U.S. folks with hot 3G N-Series phones that only work in Europe, before releasing a U.S. version several months later like they did with the N95. But according to FCC clearances,... read more

Atom Feed XSL Stylesheet

Atom Feed XSL Stylesheet
One of the key features of Feed Manager is the ability to render a virtually illegible XML feed as HTML so that it is more easily understood by a person. The secret behind this feature is a simple XSLT stylesheet...

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Edsid ImageManipulator 1.02 (Freeware)

Resize, resample and optimize your image files read more

Please help find Madeline

British 3 year old Madeleine McCann was abducted from her apartment bedroom in Praia da Luz holiday village(Algarve, Portugal) on Thursday 3rd of May 2007. There is currently a £100,000 reward for the safe return of Madeleine.

If you have any information please call the police on (00 351) 218 641 000.

For more information, downloadable posters, and to donate to the cause, visit the official website set up by Madeleine's parents: www.bringmadeleinehome.com

If you have information on Madeleine please use the phone numbers above and do not try and make contact through SpringWidgets.

This post is independent of any media or law enforcement agencies and has no connections to the McCann family and is here to promote awareness only. read more

The value of an RSS subscriber at 30 dollars

Have you ever wondered how much each subscriber to your RSS feed is worth. Well according to Mark over at 45n5 that magic number is currently $30. Mark arrived at this figure by dividing the price blogs have recently sold for by the number of subscribers to the blog.

I have previously made predictions about RSS playing a more important role back in October 2006. It looks like RSS is now an important metric to measure the success of a site and it is also starting to play a larger role in deciding the monetary value of a blog.

RSS subscribers and their value

Although Mark's use of RSS as a measurement of value was just a bit of fun it does show that RSS is a valued metric. A year ago most webmasters and readers would not have placed much if any value in the number of subscribers you have.

As RSS becomes a more valued metric the value of the RSS feed itself will grow. There are going to be more advertisers willing to buy advertising in an RSS feed and the value of RSS will grow. This is because many RSS subscribers do not click through to the website itself but use the feed to consume the content.

This post is from the Newsniche website and should not be reproduced elsewhere. Why not subscribe to the RSS feed and get this information delivered straight to your News reader.

read more

Bullet-Proof Bras Being Issued to German Policewomen [Protect The Boobs]

Policewomen in Germany are getting another layer of protection thanks to a new bra that has been secretly tested for the last two months. I never thought about it before but it makes sense that a... read more

Images of Terminator Caught In Hi-Res Trailer [Terminator]

So you've seen John Connor and you've met Marcus Wright, but where are the stills of the robots? Lucky for us, one intrepid Gizmodo reader searched through the Hi-res trailer to find us a good... read more

Social Trends for July

Google stays at the top. Live and Furl are gaining momentum. More trends here. addthis_url = 'http://blog.addthis.com/?p=33'; addthis_title = 'Social Trends for July'; addthis_pub = '';

Google stays at the top. Live and Furl are gaining momentum. More trends here.

Social Bormaking Trends

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Language Translator 1.2

Full text language translator.
About Language Translator
Translates any text between different 22 different languages using Googles language translation service. It can even detect the source language.
read more

NetShare Pulled From iPhone App Store (Again) [Netshare]

We've been wondering how the people behind NetShare get their app approved by Apple for the iPhone App Store. It adds the ability to tether your laptop to your iPhone, using the handset's 3G modem as... read more

Install Plugin Manager

Install Plugin Manager
Download the Plugin Manager installation script. Save the file locally as pm-install.cgi. Upload the pm-install.cgi file you just saved via FTP or some other file transfer application into Movable Type?s root/home directory. This is the same directory in which...