http://blog.widgizit.com Everybody's doing it. Well... they should be. Wed, 04 Jul 2007 02:07:23 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en 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 ... http://blog.widgizit.com/index.php/2007/07/03/a-quick-update/ 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 ... http://blog.widgizit.com/index.php/2007/06/04/widget-platforms/ 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 ... http://blog.widgizit.com/index.php/2007/06/02/one-week-in/ 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 ... http://blog.widgizit.com/index.php/2007/05/25/up-and-running/ 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 ... http://blog.widgizit.com/index.php/2007/05/22/closing-the-gap/ 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 ... http://blog.widgizit.com/index.php/2007/05/09/getting-closer/ 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 ... http://blog.widgizit.com/index.php/2007/04/23/coming-over-to-the-server-side/ 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 ... http://blog.widgizit.com/index.php/2007/04/15/widgetbox/ 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 ... http://blog.widgizit.com/index.php/2007/03/31/one-baby-step-at-a-time/ 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 ... http://blog.widgizit.com/index.php/2007/03/19/hello-world/