Published July 3rd, 2007
in widget.
I haven’t written in several weeks and wanted to put out a quick update. The Amazon widgets have been successful beyond my expectations – between the three, they are up to 700+ subscriptions. I am in the process of designing my next widget, and all I can say for now is that it will be [...]
Having just gone through the registration process for my widgets on a number of sites, I thought I would write up a summary report card on the various widget directories. I decided early on to directly host my widgets – the downside is that it was a pain to set up the necessary infrastructure, but [...]
Published June 2nd, 2007
in amazon, provider, widget and widgetbox.
Well, it’s been one week since I debuted the first two widgets. I have since debuted a third widget called Amazon Latest and Greatest that displays a selection of new releases or bestsellers in a chosen Amazon category. This widget has proven to be the most popular so far, due to a large part to [...]
I am happy to announce to my loyal readers (um, zero, one?) that widgizit.com is officially up and running. I’ve submitted my first two widgets, Amazon List and Amazon Browser to Widgetbox for approval to display in their gallery. Please take a few minutes and play around with configuring the widgets if you get a [...]
Published May 22nd, 2007
in amazon, widget and widgetbox.
Widgizit.com is extremely close to launch. The site is painfully spartan for now. It really only does two things right now – lets users register and serves up widgets quickly. Getting the web site up and running was very rewarding from a learning perspective, but it took much more effort than I had originally planned [...]
I’ve made considerable progress since my last post. I have a first-cut working Ruby on Rails application built on a development box – an Ubuntu VM (on Windows). The first round of widgets (Amazon-based) are ready to go. Much of the build process for the widgets and the web site is automated. I’ve signed up [...]
Published April 23rd, 2007
in ruby and ruby on rails.
The past week or so has found me coming up to speed on Ruby on Rails. I am developing portions of the site using RoR, and it’s been interesting so far. Ruby on Rails (RoR) is an open source web framework. The tag line is “convention over configuration,” meaning it’s designed to maximize out-of-the-box common [...]
Published April 15th, 2007
in provider, widget and widgetbox.
I’m looking at a number of widget registries in which to host my widget. The whole point is to distribute it as widely as possible, and there are several options – Google Gadgets, Yahoo Widgets, Microsoft Gadgets, MacOS Dashboard, Widgetbox, Widgipedia, and others. I chose Widgetbox as the first one to try mainly because widget [...]
Published March 31st, 2007
in amazon, browser and widget.
I’ve added a couple of sample widgets to the sidebar. The first widget is an Amazon Browser. Type in whatever query you want and hit Enter. You can change the search index by clicking on the magnifying glass and for all indices but “All”, you can specify a specific sort order. Additionally, move the scroll [...]
Published March 19th, 2007
in Indulgence and widget.
Here we go. Widgizit represents the very front end of a meandering trek into the world of widgets. As someone with a reasonably strong development background but with little experience with web-based technologies, this has been a longer journey than I (at least) expected, but hey, it’s been fun so far. I’m intending for this [...]