Widgets are taking over the web, small pieces at a time. Big web destinations are opening their templates to custom configurations by users and pre-configurations with special partners. Mix and match your favorite content from around the web on your personal start page from Microsoft, Google, or Netvibes. Share a few live and always updating bits of information in your blog sidebar using widgets on WordPress or TypePad. Small(er) businesses can leverage the huge distributions of users across most of the top web properties. Over half of the top Internet companies for home users currently open up their pages for…
Category Archives: Widgets
Yahoo! My Headlines widget
Yahoo! released version 3.1 of its Widget Engine today including a new widget that displays the latest headlines from your My Yahoo! feeds. The new widget, Yahoo! My Headlines, allows you to see the latest headlines, source feed, and publish time of your My Yahoo! feed subscriptions….
Creating a feed syndication platform at Microsoft
Starting next week I will join Microsoft’s Windows Live division to create a new product team around syndication technologies such as RSS and Atom. I will help build a feed syndication platform leveraged by Microsoft products and developers all around the world. I am excited to construct a team and product from scratch focused on scalability and connecting syndication clients and their users wherever they may exist: desktop, mobile, media center, gaming console, widget, gadget, and more. Live.com is the new default home page for users of the Internet Explorer 7 and the Windows Vista operating system. Live.com will be…
State of the aggregator
In the beginning, there was text. Early feed applications such as Netscape’s In-Box Direct, PointCast, and Microsoft Active Desktop transformed existing data formats such as a newspaper and its articles, summaries, and full-text and applied traditional publishing thoughts to a new transport medium. Almost 10 years after then introduction of early web feed formats we are just starting to tap into the full potential of feeds as a descriptive data format with rich payloads and more easily discoverable content. Desktop aggregation The desktop has been the traditional home of feed experiences. Our desktop aggregators are full of text-heavy content (preferably…
AIM opens to developers
AOL Instant Messenger is now officially available to external developers for custom presence, add-ons, and full integration of AIM into existing applications. I signed up for a developer key and I’ve implemented my AIM presence to my contact page as a first step. The new AIM developer features open up new methods of integration for everyone from the independent publisher all the way up to big corporations. AIM Presence You can now integrate your AIM status into web pages and other applications to let people know when you are online. You can also communicate your idle status, away message,…
Week of the APIs
The latest episode of Om and Niall PodSessions is now available. This week’s theme is APIs and the new opportunities for service providers, developers, and end users. Kevin Burton of TailRank joined us to add an independent developer perspective to this week’s discussion. This week’s session is 26 minutes and 28 seconds in length and a 12.2 MB download. Topics Amazon introduced its Alexa web search platform on Monday. The new services give developers the ability to use content from Alexa’s crawler data and other web services in a hosted environment. Amazon is letting developers upload their own data, process…
Google Personalized homepage API
Yesterday Google announced an API to add content to the Google personalized homepage using a custom XML file. Last night I coded my first Google homepage widget to display a Technorati Mini on my personalized homepage with a pre-populated value of my blog URL. Here’s how you can check it out: Go to the Google personalized homepage and sign-in. Click on “Add Content” in the top-left corner. Create a developer section by adding a feed URL of “developer.xml.” You will now see a new “My Modules” section. Add a module by entering with http://www.niallkennedy.com/gmodule.xml in the URL field. You…
Two Google announcements this week
The New York Times reports Google plans to introduce a new version of Google Desktop on Monday and a “communications tool” on Wednesday. The new Google Desktop will feature live content panels allowing developers to write their own widgets associated with Google Desktop. A beta version of Google Desktop version 2 is now available on the Google Desktop site. What communications tool will Google introduce on Wednesday? Google mobile? Google IM? We have a few days to speculate. Tags: googledesktop…