Widgets Lab

American Airlines Wi-Fi Widget

Derek Anderson — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:30:37 +0000

American Airlines is launching its new AA Wi-Fi Widget that enables customers to identify Wi-Fi equipped flights 24 hours prior to departure. The tool allows travelers to find out if their AA flight will be scheduled with Wi-Fi enabled aircraft. American Airlines inflight Wi-Fi is provided by Gogo Inflight Internet

A brief video on how Gogo works.

Internet connectivity is now available on all Boeing 767-200 aircraft, select MD80’s and is coming soon to our 737 fleet. You can enjoy complimentary access to all AA.com has to offer — book flights, hotel or car rental, check your AAdvantage® account and more. And with prices as low as $5.95 per session, Gogo® Inflight Internet provides full broadband web, VPN and e-mail access so you can stay connected during your flight.

This widget can be embedded in your blog, web site and social pages. Its written in Flash, so the usual JavaScript limitations aren’t a factor.

Connectivity via Wi-Fi is becoming a necessity instead of just a convenience. As this trend progresses we will see many more instances of these types of tools that help you predict your ability to connect.
What I found missing here is a desktop version of this widget. A Windows 7, Mac or Linux version would be smart. But I think the best play would come in the form of a Smart Phone App! People are far more likely to use their iPhone to search for this information on a “spur of the moment” basis.

AA Wi-Fi Widget

Add E! News Now to your website

Derek Anderson — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:27:55 +0000

If your readers are into celebrity news, here is a quick, sure fire way to add celebrity related current events in video clip mode. The content is always fresh and up to the minute juicy!

Make sure to grab the code from the widget!

Ahhh…The Beauty Tip of the Day widget

Derek Anderson — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:15:46 +0000

Here is the Beauty Tip of the Day widget which has been created using the Clearspring.com widget engine.

Make sure to grab the code right from the widget!

Up to the minute keyword feed widget from sency.com

Derek Anderson — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:20:24 +0000

Here is a simple, yet very customizable widget that delivers content based upon your “keyword” choice. The content is updated in almost real-time. I say “almost real-time” because some keywords would send this cool scrolling widget out of control.

excerpt from sency.com:

Our content feed offers websites and blogs the ability to have automatically updating, real time information, scrolling on a webpage for any keyword.

This widget that we offer websites and blogs has a built in spam filter to help ensure that the real time information is relevant and useful.

The content options are endless because websites and blogs have complete control over which keyword they use. Websites have the option to customize the background color, height, width, text color, and text size of the scrolling content that the widget produces.

What I did:

I set up the widget in the simplest terms using the keyword “Android” and setting the widget size to 250 X 300. I did not alter any colors. This is the stock widget.
You can alter things like text color and font size, background color, border color, header text, etc. This widget has many options, some you may not understand. I suggest trying them out and hitting the generate button and hitting the preview button until you get the widget displaying the way you want. Oh…don’t forget to set the link color to something other than the same color as your text. Otherwise its impossible to tell links from regular text.

Go and create your own sency.com/content feed widget.
I understand there is a WordPress plugin/widget for sency too.

Holiday Countdown Widget from Gill’s Cruise

Derek Anderson — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:43:37 +0000

Here is a cool Travel & Vacation widget that lets you quickly and easily create an embeddable representation of your impending getaway. Simply input your destination, the dates you will be travelling, pick a color (there are only two?) and copy and paste the resulting code to your website or blog.

excerpt from: gillscruise.com

Proudly display to your visitors where and when you are going on your next holiday, business trip or vacation. This highly advanced web widget, which you can embed on your blog or website will geo locate any place on earth and pull some of the best pictures from Google Maps and Panoramio. All sleekly animated in a slide show style.

The remaining days to you holiday are neatly displayed. When your holiday starts widget will display that you are currently on holiday, and when you return it will display that you have visited this place.

This way you can let your visitors know that you are not going to post on your blog for example during this time, and will be notified when you are back. This gives you are chance to recommend your favourite destination, and can build a social following for your favourite place on earth. We hope you enjoy what we have built, and let us know in comments on our blog if you have any suggestions for improvements.

Observations:
1. I would like to see the widget be able to search more databases for a wider variety of images. I tried Sydney and Berlin with no image results. London works, obviously Tokyo works and New York is displayed on the widget creation page.

2. Only having two available colors for the widget border will be a deal killer for some. I realize “Carbon” (light gray/white) will work with most any color scheme. But most people are used to being able to pick their exact color for a widget.

3. JavaScript has pros and cons. It is an excellent widget building platform but is still viewed as unacceptable by some (Wordpress.com, MySpace etc.) Perhaps a Flash version as well? Maybe consider porting this widget to Widgetbox, Clearspring etc.

4. There are no registration requirements and the widget is extremely simple to set up. These two factors alone are very important. Excellent job!

Get your Holiday Countdown Widget from gillscruise.com/widget

Solar system widgets from widgetbox

Derek Anderson — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:15:57 +0000

Shutterfly.com scrapbook style photo album widget

Derek Anderson — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:46:10 +0000

Shutterfly.com is a photosharing/scrapbooking paradise. Their unique “photobook” creation tools allow you to create some seriously cool scrapbook style, embeddable photo albums.

You can choose to have colorful backgrounds or just cover entire pages with photos. Some templates even allow for nesting smaller photos within larger photos. Did I mention that you can also create “share sites” where your friends and family can download photos. Also available is the ability to purchase gifts with photos printed directly on them. Mugs, ornaments, mousepads, even large artist style canvas wall hangings. There are actually too many to mention here. Check out “Photo Gifts”

There are seemingly endless options for creating your Scrapbook photobook.

Here is an actual widget from a great Shutterfly article at blog.susanfinch.com

Click here to view this photo book larger

The service is FREE and only requires registering your account.

Visit shutterfly.com
Visit the shutterfly.com/free photo sharing page.

Elf Yourself strikes again

Derek Anderson — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 23:02:59 +0000

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

This Elf is made for sharing!

…on Facebook
…on Twitter
…via email
…and its embeddable!

You can even purchase the video for $4.99, or mugs or….?

Elf Yourself from OfficeMax and JibJab

2012 U.S. election widgets…already?

Derek Anderson — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:47:25 +0000

Here we are, late in 2009 and already there is a jump on the widgets and banners for the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election.

I don’t believe I am yet over the barrage of radio, television and Internet political advertising.

Some of these widgets are just simple banner embeds and others are relavent sources of political news that will deliver candidate related information as the campaign approaches.

First up is, of course Ron Paul.

There are 5 total “DraftRonPaul” banners that are designed to fit nicely on any blog sidebar or header. These come from Trevor Lyman, the architect of the original RonPaul money bomb.

Here is a scrolling widget that serves up the latest U.S. political news from a wide variety of sources such as Time Magazine, Reuters, CNN, ABC News and more. (grab the code right from the widget) This widget is powered by FeedZilla.

News widgets and RSS

You will also be able to find iPhone apps to download:
2012 US Election 3.0.1
or 2012 US Election 3.0.1

Don’t forget the Apple desktop:
2012 Election countdown widget.

…and from Widgetbox:

The 2012 Presidential Election from Widgetbox.

Perhaps a Poll?Try Toluna poll widgets? Here is an example:

As you can see, there are already many choices this early in the game. You can bet that it will only get more crowded as the campaign heats up.

Fedora 12 Constantine countdown

Derek Anderson — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:39:43 +0000

This is a simple countdown widget to the release of the new Fedora 12.

Get the Fedora 12 countdown widget.

Distro release counters seem to be popping more frequently. The first one that I posted about was the Ubuntu 8.10. It appears as though the Ubuntu counter resets for each release. So if you embed the Ubuntu countdown widget in your site, it will display a new counter for the next impending release. Sweet!

Does anyone know which distro was the first to release a “distro release date counter” widget?

Do you by chance have an image of that counter?