Widgizit » amazon

Update: Amazon API changes

blogger — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 13:58:49 +0000

Our widgets make great use of an API that Amazon provides. Most of you may not be aware of this, but Amazon now requires all applications that use their Product Advertising API to make signed requests (for authentication purposes). As of August 15, 2009, all API calls that are not signed will be rejected.

I just (painfully) updated the widgets to comply with the new requirements. Hopefully this will be hiccup-free, but please contact us if you run into any trouble with your widgets. Thanks!

one week in

blogger — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 17:13:49 +0000

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 good folks at Widgetbox, who decided to feature the widget on the front page. That publicity boosted my overall widget subscriptions on Widgetbox from < 20 to over 130. I’m quite pleased with the symbiotic relationship between widget developer and widget host. Having not ever experienced the feedback loop afforded by a web application, I’ve been quite happy and a little surprised at all the encouragement and positive feedback I’ve gotten. To all who have reached out to me, thanks. I welcome suggestions and feedback of any kind, as the whole point of a widget is to appeal to as many people as possible.

This week, widgizit.com experienced its first production problem. The outbound e-mail stopped working, making it impossible for people to register on the site. It took awhile to get it up and running, but to those who were waiting, you should be able to register again. Just another lesson in the realities of maintaining a web application, and I suspect it will not be my last scare. I can only ask any widget users to be patient and let me know if something goes wrong.

up and running

blogger — Fri, 25 May 2007 12:01:24 +0000

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 chance.

Update: By end of day, I am now featured in the gallery at Widgetbox with 8 new subscribers and growing. I’m also in the process of getting the widgets up at Google Gadgets. I have to say that I’ve been spoiled with Widgetbox – Google and other registries I’ve looked at are not nearly as slick configuration-wise.

This has been a satisfying day. Lots of cool stuff to come…

Closing the gap

blogger — Wed, 23 May 2007 00:40:07 +0000

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 for. The end result, however, includes a repeatable, automated build process. This should (ha) allow me to concentrate on building cool widgets and exploring some of the rapidly evolving platforms (Silverlight, Flex, JavaFX anyone?), which was the original plan all along.

Near-term next steps include descriptions/instructions for the two currently completed Amazon widgets and completing the publication of the widgets on Widgetbox. Then I will have finally released these things into the wild!

Getting closer

blogger — Thu, 10 May 2007 01:21:13 +0000

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 with Slicehost to host the site – they come highly recommended and the price was extremely compelling. I’m now coming up to speed on things like DNS configuration, setting up a scalable production web server environment, and maneuvering around Linux. While it’s been an eye opener as to all of the components needed to get a web application off of the ground (and I’m sooo barely scratching the surface), I’ve also been thrilled at the plethora of readily available tutorials, how-tos, forums, wikis, etc. to make this easier. Many others have trodden similar ground to get their fledgling efforts off of the ground, and this is a very good thing.

One step at a time…

blogger — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 01:38:32 +0000

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 bar to see how the widget can dynamically load results. The second widget is a Amazon “list” widget. It can be used to load a variety of lists – Wish Lists, Wedding or Baby Registries, canned searches, similarity searches, etc.

Widgets should of course be easy to add to your site and easy to configure to your individual taste. As such, both Amazon widgets already have a number of configurable options, such as whether to show items details or what the widget title should be. These options are currently settable via the URL and undocumented. I’m looking now into registering the widgets at sites like Widgetbox to make adding a widget to your blog/web site very easy.

Neither widget is groundbreaking, but at this early stage we’re aiming for “functional” and maybe “cute.” The Amazon widget is a great first widget to learn client-side web app basics and build out various infrastructure pieces. Once some of the building blocks are in place, the intent is to move on to more interesting widgets.