Until next time...

Waddle on!

Bodge101

Targeted and disciplined media planning is essential to successfully leverage widgets. Move beyond their novelty by incorporating a few basic strategies.

Call them what you will -- widgets, gadgets, wadgets, minis or whatever else the industry drums up. The bottom line is that these "things" (we'll call them widgets in this article) have created an enormous buzz in online media. And for good reason. Widgets represent a powerful means to connect advertisers with a mass of users, in the spirit of increasing customer loyalty and, ultimately, revenue -- but only when deployed smartly.

Widget defined
First, let's establish a basic understanding of widgets. Technically, "widget" is the common term for a portable chunk of code that can be embedded on any web page to add utilities or content that is not static (e.g., a news feed). Functionally, widgets have gained popularity as a way for websites to enhance the user experience, particularly on the rapidly growing number of social media sites, by allowing people to add, share and create information relative to their interests.

While the industry has seen a handful of successful installations with scale (e.g., maps, weather, calendars, horoscopes, music, etc.), widgets have created -- thus far, in one person's humble opinion -- more noise than value. If media companies don't take a more disciplined approach around widgets, we will see their novelty wear off like many other innovations. That said, there still is a tremendous opportunity to move beyond the hype and deploy widgets in a manner that truly enhances your brand and the user experience.

Start by focusing on the following basic media planning strategies:

Thoughtful concept development
From the onset, it's important to clearly define your widget and its role within your broader media mix. Often, widgets are deployed without much consideration for their true business value. When developing your widget strategy, adhere to the basic tenets of media planning: timeliness, frequency and relevance.

Like any strategic planning, start by clearly identifying your target audience, first placing yourself in your customers' shoes and then in your brand's shoes. By no means is this a new concept. Yet you'd be surprised by how many widgets are developed that don't gain significant traction. Ultimately, you want your customers to answer "Yes!" when asked if they would place your widget on their profile page. In fact, it wouldn't hurt to conduct a customer survey or poll to that effect.

Next, before moving forward with any widget development and deployment, address the question, "How can I leverage my audience needs to create an affinity with my product, service or brand?"

Below are guidelines on how to add value for your users through widgets:

* Save them time. Deliver the information that users want and seek out on a regular basis by personalizing their experience (e.g., "Remember Me" and "My Preferences") and creating frequency (e.g., stock quotes, weather reports, election results and so forth).

* Save them money. Offer promotions that entice them based on their interests, wants and needs. For example, PETCO might consider offering discounts on a pet-related site, while Patagonia and Sidestep target lifestyle sites.

* Reinforce the relationship. Let users know you care by consistently delivering fresh, relevant content. For music junkies, this might be concert ticket promotions and memorabilia. Or scoreboard tickers and schedules for sports enthusiasts.

* Entertain them. Offer light content (e.g., videos, event coverage, movie trailers) that they can digest quickly -- when they have time.

Targeted distribution
While it worked in the movie "Field of Dreams," in the world of widgets, "if you build it, they will come" does not apply. Simply developing and deploying a widget does not mean people automatically will see it, much less use it.

When it comes to rolling out a new widget, success hinges on a well-defined and valid distribution strategy that, again, incorporates the basics of media planning by including timely and personalized content.

Also, while distribution is not synonymous with a broad-based media plan, it does need to focus on a clear understanding of your audience and its role within the larger marketing and communications effort.

We all will learn more as the widget paradigm evolves. In the interim, it's wise to focus on your "lowest hanging fruit" -- or core audience. We are in a fascinating digital space where convergence and consumer control are leading communication mechanisms and successful distribution of your widgets can play a significant role in attracting and retaining customers.

Below are general guidelines for creating targeted distribution of widgets:

* Leverage your brand ambassadors. Ensure that your internal and external influencers (including placement on lists and websites) are at the top of your distribution list. They often have a broad network of associates within your targeted communities, thereby quickly extending your reach.

* Entice and engage. Reward users for their participation and advocacy of your widgets. Customer loyalty programs that offer discounts for usage and referrals are an excellent way to keep users coming back.

* Keep it simple. Don't recreate the wheel. Advertising.com's Joel Fisher highlighted a few key techniques at iMedia's Brand Summit on Feb. 11, such as leveraging industry standards, following publisher specifications and utilizing Flash technology.

Modeling and measurement
It's imperative to track and measure both engagement and exposure, to know whether your widgets strategy is working or not.

Good, bad or indifferent, digital media will continue -- at least through 2008 -- to rely on metrics and accountability. Therefore, the industry must seek ways to understand intentions through merging qualitative and quantitative objectives.

Below are guidelines for ensuring accurate measurement of widgets:

* Set clear objectives. Tie your widget execution to your overall marketing strategy. Define what you are trying to achieve, whether it's better awareness, more traffic or increased revenue.

* Establish success metrics. Set milestones or "test" metrics to measure against your objectives, particularly if this is your first foray into widgets.

* Test, analyze and optimize. Follow this measurement rule of thumb from digital disciplinarians. Project primary exposure, installations, pass-alongs, secondary exposure and usage. Enable measurement tools to track those metrics. And set optimization timing and tactics.

Other considerations and cautions
Keep in mind that, even though heavyweights such as Facebook, iGoogle and MySpace have a huge potential audience, all of our great widget exploits further yield media fragmentation. Monitoring the impact of the following will help you create and deploy widgets with scale and effectiveness, as opposed to creating additional noise.

* Convergence. We need to be honest with potential usage based on a couple of factors: 1) Beware of audience double-dipping and 2) Allow your consumers to bring an experience to life in their third-party environment.

* Technology. Consumer-controlled media and open APIs have allowed platforms such as Facebook, iGoogle and other social communities to thrive, making it even more imperative to consider usage and target-ability.

* Content. Even though the audience may be counted under a particular address (e.g. facebook.com), valuable content will drive usage. Trusted content providers that create relevant extensions on for third-party platforms have had good success, particularly in terms of brand integration.

* Return on investment. To further increase revenue, consider content licensing and syndication, setup and production fees, and server/tracking technologies.

By beginning to apply these media planning principles to your widget strategy, you'll be ahead of the game in both serving your audience and improving your business results.

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WIDGETS

Nirvana espiritual con el toque de un boton puedes pasar de catolico a budista

Informe ETS asi puedes determinar si tienes o no una fauna en el ecuador, igualmente puedes conseguir a hediondos como tu y hacer grupos llamados "los facebookeros venereos" o que se yo

Consulta psicologica con opciones entre feliz, normal y suicida, que si pisas feliz salga un aviso que diga "eres un guevon" y asi se te nivela la autoestima, si pones normal sale un avisito que "no val, pero si tu eres de pinga" y si pones suicida pues sencillo, el avisito diria algo asi como "todas quieren cojerte, papi"

Reactor BFF quieres ser my best friend forever? (al menos por una semana) pulsa aca. (ya debe existir)

Dreams Twitter como importa hasta lo que sueñas (porque no tienes nada que decir) escribe con 140 caracteres tu sueño.

ZOObook como no es suficiente con alimentar a un animalito, alimente a 58, todos chillaran, berrearan y maullaran hasta que los alimente a todos, si no lo hace antes de los 2 minutos, el leon se fornica a su avatar, a que si esta divertido, a que si

Palabras Encadenadas (este juego es diverido, cero sarcasmo) un amigo deja una palabra escrita y otro debe escribir otra que empiece por la utima silaba de la anterior, puede extenderse bien

GoldenFacebook cuanto dolares vale mi perfil de facebook? aqui neogabox tendria problemas porque vadria tanto que los numeritos no cabrian en el widget

Abracitos Cromaticos widget utilisimo para que todos sepan de que color son tus abrazos

• Janet B of Organized Assistant provides some great free online tools that are quick and easy to use.

• Kathie of VA Directory provides a simple tip to help you work out who you paid money to when you forgot to write it down!

• MBB of Money Blue Book Personal Finance Blog tells you how to get a virtual business office for cheap or free.

• MBB of Money Blue Book Personal Finance Blog tells you how to obtain business credit for your small business.

• Laurie of Halo Secretarial Services discusses that solo entrepreneurs need to use an assistant to be successful.

• James Lee of Online Business Freedom presents a summary of The Journey of Entrepreneurship Event at USC.

• Fred Black of Fred Black: Internet Business Blog tells you If You Can't Sell Crap-In-A-Box, You Ain't Selling!.

• Richard McLaughlin of Oh, the Places You'll Go gives you info on More Widget Building.

• Cindy King talks about The Phases Of Cultural Communication You Go Through To Increase International Sales.

Want to participate in upcoming carnivals?  Submit your article here.

PANEL:
John Bartelson – VP New Media , Island / Defjam
Rogelio Choy – VP Business Dev, RockYou
Chair: Liz Gannes – GigaOm
Ali Partovi – CEO, iLike
Jian Chen – Frontend Software Engineer, Meebo.com

After a year of Facebook mania, clearly the scent of widgets – and some massive widget players – was enough to lure artists, and indie and major labels into the room (if not the debate), and so it began…

Ali Partovi explained that they’ve built iLike into other social platforms but have also built a set of artist tools that will enable them to do stuff once, and publish / syndicate across Facebook, Bebo and elsewhere.

Bono of U2 started to write a new song 'Wave Of Sorrow' and developed it through a process of discussion with fans on iLike. Partovi showed a video featuring Radiohead, Linkin Park and U2 and then rolled out the stats for some shock and awe impact (BTW, I haven’t checked these stats):

U2 – 2m fans on iLike / 131,000 on Myspace
Linkin Park – 542k iLike / 343k Myspace
Foo Fighters – 887k iLike / 588k Myspace
Radiohead have 1.4m fans on iLike

Through mediating their song development on iLike / Facebook in this fashion, he continued, U2 increased their iLike follower base from 1m to 1.3 million, and they’ve got nearly 10,000 comments on the video posted on U2's iLike Facebook app about the creation of the song (also available on Youtube) .

Content everywhere: aggregating a wider audience…

Chen from Meebo described their product as chat room widgets embeddable across sites. They also generate traffic into the site and between sites. All the distributed widgets aggregate together a larger audience. Meebo widgets have totally skinnable interfaces for your brand or band.

In turn, their chat widgets recognize and play certain media URLs (video, audio, photo and URL previews). The media capabilities are not just for UGC, he added, but also media syndication.

Chen saw great potential in syndicating exclusive content from high quality content providers. He cited the Kanye West 'Graduation' album release, wherein Kanye’s label worked with Buddylube, a web 2.0 marketing management company who do a lot of customization of widgets. Graduation (released 11th September 2007) has now (March 2008 ) sold 950k albums, and had 330k legal digital downloads.

Widget marketing trends & the music value chain

Choy of RockYou said they went from 7m visitors to 45m since they’ve went onto Facebook. RockYou also works on Myspace and Bebo.

From the audience someone asked: how and when do we get to the stage where this is a normal way to market and communicate with fans? Chen replied: when the tools are simple enough for independent bands and indie labels to use.

Moderator Liz Gannes said we should check out Kanye’s blog. Is it all about the marketing? No one is talking about distributing…

Partovi of iLike commented that a lot of bands are thinking of themselves as a media business, where they’ll eventually be able to do an ad-supported model.

Choy said that the notion that artists can monetize on RockYou only works if they come through something like iLike. It’s very difficult process if you want to go into selling music online.

My question (which wasn’t picked, despite having my hand up for while) was: with a million widgets and oceans of UGC, will search and widget aggregators overtake the viral growth of widgets? Do they optimize widgets for search, and how to they monitor the level and spread of widget usage as content gets more and more disaggregated?

[Sidebar: This issue will be addressed at the Chinwag Live: Micro Media Maze event next week, Tuesday 20th May – and Myspace’s European Product Direcetor Mitch McAlister and Last FM's SVP of European Ad Sales Miles Lewis are among the panelists you can quiz on this topic. Booking and more info here.]

Future distribution – D2C scenarios and widget overload

Gannes asked the panel: is the distribution business viable for you? Choy said that selling (not just music but also photos, videos, etc) is not part of what RockYou does directly, but it is through relationships... I guess he meant RockYou is part of the value chain.

Partovi remarked that as things get more and more cluttered, utility decreases, usage decreases and it’s harder to get take-up. Things stagnate and there’s less innovation; and innovation is very important.

iLike lets artists know who their fans are based on peoples’ activity on the widget. This gives, for example, Radiohead access to a much bigger audience online than they could handle or attract through their own site. However, people still downloaded their new album from Limewire, and Radiohead got no metrics [never mind revenue] for that, and no email addresses for all those people.

And there’s the rub! Elsewhere that day, as reported by Paid Content, there was a rowdier session on ad-supported music services. If I could have widgetised myself (far preferable to cloning methinks) I would definitely have been there. ;-)

----

More coverage of this session:

Widgets put music where it's at – Jemima Kiss, Media Guardian PDA blog

Upcoming evening panel event:

Chinwag Live Micro Media Maze - Tuesday 20th May 2008, London
http://live.chinwag.com/micromediamaze

The other day I found the Guitar Hero Widget over on one of the Wired blogs.  Inside the widget, they give a mini version of the game.  It includes three songs.  It's really cool.  Instead of using a plastic guitar, you're using your keyboard but none the less it's fun.

It gives me a taste of the game and would get me potentially excited about buying it.

Making a widget is SOOOO genius for a video game company.   If i'm a big fanboy of the video game, I'd send this widget to my friends who were yet to be converted so that they too could get a taste.  It empowers word of mouth advertising, which is the most powerful advertising technique.

So... Go play with the widget.

(Note: I would have embeded it here but I use Wordpress.com and they don't allow me to embed third-party flash. *frown* )

Ce logiciel est instable en rajoutant cette ligne dans les sources de logiciels

Système -> Administration -> Sources de logiciels - Onglets Logiciels de tierces logiciels

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/gilir/ubuntu hardy main universe

Ce dépôt est pour la distribution Hardy Heron. Si vous êtes toujours sur Gutsy, saisissez Gutsy à la place de hardy.

Pour l'instant cette version du logiciel ne fait pas partie des dépôts officiels d'ubuntu.

Installer le paquet python-feedparser puis le paquet screenlets. Il peut être télécharger à partir de ce site *ici*

Pour lancer les screenlets, rendez vous dans le menu Applications -> Accessoires -> Screenlets

Normalement, le logiciel se lance au démarrage de la distribution... par contre, pour les widgets il faut cocher dans Screenlets manager, lors du choix de la widget, Auto Start on login.

Image de présentation trouvée sur Screenlets.org

Des screenlets supplémentaires ? allez jeter un coup d'oeil sur ce site *ici*  ou bien sur gnome-look...

PANEL:
Scott Jenson – Mobile UI Manager, Google
Karen Kashansky - UX engineer, TellMe
Loic Maestracci – Dir. Marketing, Groove Mobile
Kyle Outlaw – Senior IA, Avenue A Razorfish
Chair: Kate Ryan – Ten Digital

The scene was verbally set by the chair Kate Ryan – we’re here not to discuss technical roadmaps, but to explore how user experiences (and Rich Internet Applications for the mobile web) may change in the future because of the impact of this product in the market.

Saying "mobile" doesn’t cut it anymore, Karen Kashansky stressed. Is the person walking; driving; is it noisy where they are; are eyes available? Kashansky came at the topic as someone who has been designing voice-driven user interfaces for twelve years.

Now she wants to take that step further, and sees a lot of potential for voice-in and voice-out on handsets in the wake the iPhone. If you're driving, you might just want to hear the list of Indian restaurants, not see it. It's all about context - user experience (UX) professionals need to take care that we're designing for the right experiences.

Rip it up and start again…

Kyle Outlaw remarked that the iPhone marked the onset of an era of disruptive mobility. Traditional design processes and deliverables are becoming extinct, he said. Instead of wireframes and siteflow we need to get our hands dirty and experiment a lot more. More R&D is required too.

Repeated reference was made through the session to the iPhone’s flaws - taking too many clicks to make calls, and terrible for SMS being the principal agreed drawbacks. But these were counterbalanced by what Google's Scott Jenson termed its "sheer audacity", with the lack of scroll bars, menus, and the visual voicemail cited as breakthroughs.

But the idea of the iPhone as the "web in your pocket" is a misnomer, reckoned Jenson. What it's about is seamless mobility. We don’t want to read the newspaper on the iPhone, we want web-enabled iPhone apps that anyone can easily connect to.

“It’s the beginning of the end of perpetuating the myth that the mobile is another desktop platform,” he said.

iPhone ripple effect and pain points

Kate Ryan asked: what’s the impact of the iPhone on design?

Jenson countered that you need the rethink the whole mobile process. There will be significant innovation but it will be driven - in terms of monestisation - by pretty boring stuff. Maestracci noted that on the new Sony Erriscon model the media player is a dumber version of the PS3. Kashansky rated visual voicemail on the iPhone.

Ryan then canvassed the panel for examples of good design on mobile. Kyle Outlaw observed that the iPhone stripped the phone down to its essential features [if you take a US-centric approach and haven’t been texting daily for 8 years like most Europeans!], contrary to the “featuritis” trend, and those features were very well done.

What will be the iPhone killers? Kyle cited the Sidekick (T-Mobile US-only handset), while it’s a little too big it’s got a better keyboard and is a messaging machine! Another panellist flagged up the PSP Slim with Skype on it. Also they were very interested in what’s going on with mobile and VOIP.

Jenson observed that in some senses the iPhone has gone too far, for example it’s the worst SMS experience, which is not good for Europe. In limiting its features, the iPhone pays a price.

Kashansky stressed that we need to look at who will be using this phone and then slim down features to suit what different types of people need.

Testing trends and development challenges

Responding to query about openness, Maestracci said open access as provided by Google Android or the iPhone SDK opens the door for designers to build apps. [But stories have also since emerged that Apple plans to patent iPhone haptics, as Bryan Rieger of Future Platforms told the audience at Chinwag Live: Real World Usability in London on April 22nd – a barrier to generalising the new user experience surely?]

Kate Ryan - how does the need to design for mobile change UX (user experience) professionals’ jobs?

Kyle Outlaw – rapid prototyping; early and often; the need for agile over waterfall development models as we go into this area where standards aren’t fixed.

Kashansky – UX professionals need to think a little more creatively about how they test things. Eg synching mobile with gaming devices, or web, IPTV, and GPS.

Jenson – people more as producers of information, not just consumers.

Maestracci – richer applications, shift from text based to media / interactive video-based; an input device not just an output device.

Outlaw – mobile used to be seen as one channel among many but now mobile is emerging as a multichannel device. VOIP application development will be big. Ribbit is developing VOIP widgets for mobile.

UX & multiple inputs: drivers for seamless mobility?

Kate Ryan asked: what is the mobile killer app? Outlaw said: searchable luggage. Kashansky wanted a “mobile device as a shell to access my info in the cloud; so for example when I get into my car, I interact with my device via my steering wheel.” Jensen’s answer was twofold: unlimited broadband and a battery that doesn’t die quickly. Maestracci cited music, but also being "always connected".

Outlaw pointed out that in terms of development for iPhones, the approach is more like smart phones, so the approach isn’t handset-specific. Outlaw and Jenson had different thoughts on the long-term viability of SMS.

Groove Mobile’s Maestracci remarked that the thing about the mobile phone is that it’s an always connected device – SMS was the first push technology for the phone; now we have Blackberry and email. The open platform can really expand the possibilities of the phone.

Audience question: stylus inputs – is it going away or will it be integrated with iPhone-type design?

Jenson explained that he worked at Symbian for quite a while [stylus central!]. Using your hands feels more personal and less geeky, he said, and you can lose the stylus all the time. Plus, if you design for the phone, you want to have multiple input points on the screen at any one time. At the same time, he admitted, he can’t get to grips with the keyboard at all.

Platform and apps as a stepping stone

Audience question: the Safari iPhone browser makes it easier for iPhone application developers. Is this the start of a trend - “optimised for iPhone” - and will this diminish the opposition and make the iPhone ubiquitous?

Jenson replied: “to me the iPhone is a webkit", it’s just raising the standard of mobile browsing; and Motorola are adopting the new Opera Mobile browser, which is a really good browser. In turn he advised: “don’t just port your website; you still have to re-design it for the mobile.”

As with the iPhone SDK, developers will be able to do VOIP apps, Kyle Outlaw added. Outlaw is also developing Food Ninja for restaurant reviews.

While there were slightly fewer mobile-specific panels this year, mobile was integrated into a broader range of panels instead, which is as it should be I guess. But appreciating the impact of mobility and scanning its horizons still requires the kind of deep focus provided by this session.

And a week after SXSW whaddya know, on March 18th along came an M:Metrics report that the iPhone Hype is Holding Up – also covered in the New York Times.

[UPDATE: Google's Scott Jenson is speaking at MEX (Mobile User Experience) in London, 27-28th May 2008 http://www.pmn.co.uk/mex/
MEX Blog updates here

Plus there's a great short interview with Scott by MEX's Mark Pawlowski here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5VeIuxg6SE]

----

Continue the session discussion on the dedicated Ning social network site http://Lifeafteriphone.ning.com (requires Ning log-in)

More coverage of this session:

New Media Buzz – Michael Leis of Emerge Digital
In Transit - Mark Danielson
Media Guardian PDA blog - Jemima Kiss

Older general posts on the iPhone that are worth checking out:

Russell Beattie – i-dot thoughts
Mobhappy (Russel Buckley) - 2007 predictions, the final one
Mobhappy (Carlo Longino) - Is The iPhone Any More Attractive To Developers Now Than It Was Two Days Ago?

Natural disasters in 1979

Windsor Locks, Connecticut Tornado

People who died on August 04 (various years)

2007 - Lee Hazlewood, American country singer, songwriter and producer

2005 - Anatoly Larkin, Russian-American physicist

2004 - Stella Liebeck, known for her part in Liebeck v. McDonald's Restaurants, a lawsuit in which Liebeck claimed medical costs and damages for having been burned by a cup of McDonald's coffee. This lawsuit is considered to be "the poster child of excessive lawsuits" by ABC News.

2003 - Frederick Chapman Robbins, American Nobel Prize Laureate

2002 - Holly Wells & Jessica Chapman, Soham murder victims (b. 1991, 1991)

2001 - Lorenzo Music, American actor

2000 - Leslie Glass, American adult film actress

1999 - Victor Mature, American actor

1998 - Yuri Artyukhin, cosmonaut

1992 - Sophie died six hours later, shit happens.

1997 - Jeanne Calment, French supercentenarian; world's oldest ever-human

1996 - Geoff Hamilton, British gardener and broadcaster

1982 - Bruce Goff, American Architect

1981 - Melvyn Douglas, American actor

1976 - Enrique Angelelli, Argentine bishop, assassinated in the context of the "Dirty War"

1976 - Roy Herbert Thomson, Canadian publisher

1967 - Peter Smith, English cricketer

1958 - Ethel Anderson, Australian poet

1957 - Washington Luís Pereira de Sousa, President of Brazil

1938 - Pearl White, American actress

1900 - Isaac Levitan, Russian painter

1875 - Hans Christian Andersen, Danish writer

1873 - Viktor Hartmann, Russian painter

1844 - Jakob Aall, Norwegian journalist and statesman

1795 - Timothy Ruggles, American-born Tory politician

1792 - John Burgoyne, British general

1784 - Giovanni Battista Martini, Italian musician

1741 - Andrew Hamilton, American lawyer

1727 - Victor-Maurice, comte de Broglie, French general

1718 - René Lepage de Ste-Claire, lord-founder of the town of Rimouski, in New France

1639 - Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, Mexican dramatist

1612 - Hugh Broughton, English scholar

1598 - William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, English statesman

1578 - Thomas Stucley, English adventurer

1578 - Sebastian of Portugal

1526 - Juan Sebastián Elcano, Spanish explorer

1338 - Thomas of Brotherton, 1st Earl of Norfolk, son of Edward I of England

1306 - Wenceslaus III of Bohemia

Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester

Peter de Montfort

Henry de Montfort

1265 - Killed in the Battle of Evesham: Hugh le Despencer, 1st Baron le Despencer

1113 - Gertrude of Saxony

1060 - Henry I of France

I have had succes w/ this, but others i know report BIOS problems.....your chioce. Bear in mind, this is for newbs. Everything in this can be done manually, and will probably be better.

2.Msstyles

Changes your theme...the default is that disgusting xp one. May require UX-themepatcher. There are some good ones at Studio-TwentyEight.com

3.Docks

These are GREAT. VERY useful, and aesthetically pleasing. I think that RK Launcher(get iVista or Leopard Inspired)  is best, but Rocketdock and Yz Dock are pretty good. Objectdock SUX!

4.True Transparency

Pretty much changes the border of your windows. There are 2 or 3 good mac themes. At osx-e, there are a Tiger one (i made it) and a Leopard one. Both are great.

5.Spotlight Clones

These do just what the name suggests-Emulate Spotlight! Many work w/ Google Desktop Search, so you might have to get that. I recommend I-find, but searchspy and macfind aregood too.

6.Macswitch

An alt-tab replacement. Supports .icos and .pngs as icons for windows.

7.Finderbar

Gives you that Mac taskbar.....you know what i mean. Some people have appearance issues....but it is great if it works fine.

8.Tiger System Preferences

Like control panel, just......TIGER! Surprise.....bet you didn't see that one coming.

9. Explorer Mods

Ok....for this, you can use an alternative, like nexplorer. Or you can use Styler w/ a mac theme and Findexer. I prefer the latter.

10.Widgets

Forthis, you can use Konfabulator or Avedesk. I don't use these b/c the take up to much RAM....but if you have more than a gig, or don't run many apps at once, these are great. I recommend a combination of Kon and Ave. Also, try Sysmetrix.

Most of this, plus much more, can be found at www.osx-e.com

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Randy Ksar
rksar at yahoo dot com

~hasta la vista, baby!

Kimi 07

"Nothing endures but change" Heraclitus Greek philosopher

Social networking sites like linkedin, myspace, facebook, and plaxo utilize viral loop or viral networking in order to grow traffic to your site. The problem for Realtors and affiliates is that these sites are either targeted to the wrong audience, myspace.com, or they are flat with limited features bloggers enjoy on their blogs.

Ning.com is changing the social networking landscape. Ning allows users, for free, to set up their own "social network." The treasure trove of Ning features and benefits:

Social Networking

1. Create a full Social Network, for free, that you customize and brand as your own

2. Invite members, meet new people, network within or outside your business niche

3. Full message center with address book importing from Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and Hotmail.

4. Customizable profile pages.

5. Photo slideshows, video players, music players, and network badges, that can be embeded anywhere on the Internet, seamlessly funneling new people to your network.

6. RSS feeds of your network's features, such as members, discussions, photos, videos, music/podcasts, and blog posts.

7. Members can set different privacy settings for every photo, video, group, or blog post they contribute.

Full Customization

1. Add your own logo, branding, and visual design to make your network unique

2. Choose from a variety of themes and customize them to make them your own

3. Make your network public or private

4. Customize the appearance of your branded photo slideshow, video player, music/podcast player widgets and network badges

5. Customize the profile questions your network asks when members join. Make questions private, so that the answers are only viewable by you and your Network Administrators

6. Enable “one-click” Facebook Promotion so your members can add photo slideshows, video players, and music/podcasts from your network seamlessly into Facebook

7. Choose to moderate photos and videos before they are posted

8. Choose from a set of supported languages (English, Chinese, Dutch, French, Portuguese, Spanish) or translate your social network into any unsupported language by changing one file in the code

Discussion Forum

1. Start and tag a discussion

2. Add discussion posts and reply to those posts

3. Organize discussions by categories

4. Click through the personal profile pages of other members engaged in the discussion

5. View all discussions across your social network

Groups

1. Enable members of your network to create groups

2. Enable members of your network to make groups public or private

3. Add group descriptions, images, discussions, and members

The sad part about it is the marketing strategy is simple- Educate the user on how to search. It's a great opportunity to use print advertising to explain the details, banner advertising to direct traffic and video and flash as online tutorials. It has to be a consistent and updated approach- Mediacompany.com now has 30,000 local business listings and 1,000 local business profiles. Find what you need @ newspaper.com.

Even with a solid multimedia promotional campaign you are going to leave out a lot of potential searchers. These are the searchers that don't start at the home page and won't ever search that way but may be enticed to search by a strategically placed widget. Every local search company should provide a listing database broken down by category. These categories are relevant to many sections of the mediacompany.com. We have all seen what I am talking about- Really good entertainment sites give you a simple search for local bars and restaurants but you can get even more creative than that.....

Some random ideas

• In the Outdoors section a simple search widget for all hunting, fishing, kayaking and camping business and info
• In the Fashion section a search for clothiers, hair salons and nail salons.

These widgets will drive traffic and incremental revenue for the media company plus bring long term results to the SMB.

Every widget you create should send the user back to a landing page that provides more than just business listings. Make sure these pages include ratings and reviews, events, mapping and photos. These landing pages will help you become the Market Leader for this information.

Widgets are the most talked about web application these days. I am also searching for more information on widgets. I found this informative article written by Tony Bombacino, chief marketing officer of Restaurant.com.

Over the past couple of years, yet another new term has entered the marketer's vocabulary; that term of course is "widget." And while many people are already talking about widgets 2.0, many others are just starting to pay attention. Whether you think widgets are the most annoying fad ever or the most innovative trend in interactive online marketing, there is no denying they are part of our industry dialogue. These days, I can't have a conversation with a publisher, salesman or colleague, read an article or attend a conference where the word and topic is not being debated. Often the debate centers on the mere definition of a widget -- not how or when they should be used, or who is leading the way.

Beyond the definition of a widget, what qualifies as a widget is being debated in marketing conference rooms around the world. Depending on the size and focus of your company, and your role within it, you may have debated whether this new "thing" should be called a widget, a gadget, a desktop application, a downloadable application, or some cool new name native to your company.

With that said, let's take a deeper look at the what, why, when, who and how of widgets. Beyond the definitions I've heard, I thought I would first see what Dictionary.com had to say. As I expected, the results were as varied as the debate:

1. Widget [wij-it] -- noun -- a small mechanical device, as a knob or switch, esp. one whose name is not known or cannot be recalled; gadget: a row of widgets on the instrument panel. 2. In graphical user interfaces, a combination of a graphic symbol and some program code to perform a specific function (e.g. a scroll-bar or button). 3. A device or control that is very useful for a particular job usually provides widget libraries containing commonly used widgets drawn in a certain style and with consistent behavior.

Or what about this simple and more industry-specific definition found at FreeWebs.com -- "Widgets are small content features that help make your site personal and unique."

Some of these definitions are relevant to our everyday businesses, some are not. For the purposes of moving forward, let's assume that widgets in this article's context mean everything from Facebook widgets to unique on-site widgets that brands develop to drive engagement, sales and/or ad revenue to more complex downloadable widgets/desktop apps that have multiple functions. In the end, the common thread across all of these widgets is that they all aim to drive some type of customer action (purchase/revenue, brand awareness/engagement, pass-along, etc.).

I am searching more on widgets and I'll comeback with a detailed study. Till then if you get any more stuff get back with your findings.

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Ogg Theora from archive.org

Thanks to drew Roberts for helping me with ponunciation, it would be worse without him :)

But seriously it wasn't until the other night when I sat down to have a little net time that I noticed how many Google based things I use, although I have just left one of them behind when I moved to Wordpress over Blogger. Unless Wordpress has Google links that I don't know about?

So at the risk of seeming like one big advert (although I'm not getting paid for this) I just want to share a few things, all in one place that really make some things easy - How to let Google run your life.

(All links open in a new window)

Gmail

The best feature? Has to be how it groups emails and responses together in 'conversations'. This means when you have a rally of emails going back and fourth between yourself and one or more other people you don't suddenly end up with 20 separate individual emails clogging up your inbox. They all get put into one line which when clicked on contains sort of tabbed entries for each response. You can then delete/save one, a few or all of the entries under that conversation.

The next best feature has to be the elimination of FOLDERS. At work I use Outlook for email (not by choice) and I have 6 years worth of folders full of absolute shit that I don't need but don't have the hours of my life to give away by sorting through them. The result of this is that I never find anything in them that I need. There is a way by using CATEGORIES that I could have probably better organised my rubbish but it's clumsy to set up and use. Enter Gmail with its LABELS. Enter one or more labels to describe the email you want to save then archive it. It goes into one big pot of rubbish for easy and fast retrieval whenever you click a label associated with whatever you want to pull up.

Now if they can figure out a way for me to label the contents of my house for easy filing and retrieval I'll be a very happy camper.

Enough about Gmail - except get yourself an account and enjoy endless anally retentive filling and organisational cleverness every time you get an email.

Once I got into Gmail I got lured in by some of the links at the top of the page.

iGoogle

This is set as my homepage in Firefox and every time I open my browser I can view any information I choose to make available on that page via a selection of widgets. Mine shows my Gmail Inbox, my calendar and blog reader. I also have a little Post It note widget that allows me to write notes/reminders and stick them to the iGoogle page. I've had the note that reads 'PURPLE BEECH TREE' stuck on my iGoogle for so long now that I will definately not forget which tree it was that I wanted to buy for the garden next time i'm in the garden centre. You can switch to Google Classic view at any time without losing your iGoogle stuff.

Google Reader

A very simple easy to use reader for any RSS feed. I have mine set up to keep track of all the blogs I read mostly as a notifier to tell me when they've been updated. I still like to visit the blogs to comment and appreciate any design changes that have been made.

Google Calendar

This is the best invention ever for someone as forgetful as me. A calendar that you can view anywhere there is internet access either on your computer or on your mobile phone. It has an add on that allows you to syncronise with Outlook but the best bits have to be the multi-calendar functionality and the reminders.

Cameron has a lot of stuff going on with school and cubs that I have to remember and Wil has his own schedule of business trips and holidays etc that I want to keep up with and then there is my own busy schedule. Google calendar gives you one calendar on which you can have many other profiles. I have one set up for each of us, created another to show when my bills are due and have since imported the British Public Holidays calendar from the public listings. I can turn each calendar on or off so that I can view just my stuff or just Cams and Wils and so on and I can share specific calendars with one or more people.

For each item on the calendar I can have a schedule of reminders set up so that at a specified date and time my calendar will email me and/or send a text message to my mobile detailing the upcoming event. There is no cost for the text service but its worth its weight in gold alone that I remember 90% more stuff than I used to!

Google Maps

Maps are maps but when you're a Google whore you'll find it dead handy that when you're signed in all your directions and location searches are all saved for easy recall later on. Google Maps allow you to do all sorts of neat little things outside of searching for places/addresses etc . like mark areas and lines and label them which at first consideration just seems like a pointless nerdy waste of time but thats BEFORE you plot out all your favourite biking routes and then label them all and attach HTML links to photos you took at certain points along the way. I've never done that.

Google Notebooks

This feature is a little gem. I'm always collecting bits of text, recipes, excerpts and so on. I used to use a little application called Notecenter to save it all in. This worked like a little .txt document organiser and was brilliant until I started needing those bits of useless information while I wasn't at my home pc - the one with Notecenter installed.

Google provides the equivalent of Notecenter with their Notebooks. If you've ever done a search on Google you might have seen the 3 links next to the returned searches - 'cached', 'similar pages' and 'Note This'. By clicking on Note This the information you chose will be saved in the organiser for you to use anywhere. You can link this into your iGoogle page too!

Other Google apps I no longer use are Blogger and Picasa. I may be wrong but these seem like a couple of items that Google have acquired but not yet Googlised to their fullest extent. Picasa has to be downloaded in order for you to upload your photos and organise them and Blogger lacks flexible privacy features for individual blog posts.

My epitaph should read

'she came, she Googled, she went'

I'm sure Google can sort that out too.

Nama: abdul rozak

Jabatan: kepala divisi

Tanggal masuk kerja: 17 february 2008.

kita siapkan data diatas untuk dimasukan kedalam table 3 kolom. (karna tema kita kali ini hanya membuat table 3 kolom mendatar saja).

Tahap selanjutnya kita perkirakan berapa lebar atau panjangnya kolom yang akan kita buat,karna kita akan membuat table ini di halaman situs web kita,maka kita harus bisa memperkirakan berapa lebar halaman yang tersedia pada situs kita ,ok.baiklah..kita perkirakan saja lebarnya 700.untuk mendapatkan hasil table yang sempurna,kita tidak boleh memaki lebar halaman tersebut seluruhnya.kita hanya dapat memakai halaman tersbut 50% nya saja.karna jika kita pakai seluruhnya,bagron color yang kita gunakan untuk table diatas akan bepengaruh kepada widgets situs yang ada di samping kiri dan kanan table tersbut.terutama bagi anda yang memakai template 3 coloum atau 2 coloum.(sekali lagi saya katakan,saya berkata disin khusus untuk pengguna wordpress.com,karna tips-tips yang saya bagi-bagi ini adalah khusus untuk pengguna wordpress.com). Tapi tips ini juga insya Allah berguna bagi pengguna domain lain.
Kita lanjutkan lagi materi ini, Ingat! Hanya boleh menggunakan 50%nya dari halaman web yang tersdia.berarti kita hanya boleh memakainya sebanya 350/300 dari Lebar 700 yang tersedia.berarti kita harus membuat kode html dengan:
widht ''300'' atau widht ''50%'' ,untuk menunjukan kepada sistem,bahwa kita akan memakai halaman tersebut selebar 300 atau 50% nya dari lebar maksimal yang tersedia.''sekali lagi,trik ini kita pakai,dengan 7an untuk mendapatkan hasil tabel yang sempurna'.tapi jika anda mau menggunakan lebar halaman tersebut 100% juga sebenarnya bisa''.trutama bagi anda yang punya domain atau host situs sendiri. But..tapi ana membicarakan tips ini untuk wordpress.com yang gratisan lho?ho..ho..ho!! Ini penting karna tahap ini adalah tahawal awal,dimana kita akan menempatkan table ini sebagai head atau kepalanya,krna setelah itu table yang tersusun ke bawahnya hanya ngekor ke yang kita jadikan headnya tadi aja,meskipun pengekornya berpuluh-puluh kolom banyaknya.
Selanjutnya kita tentuntuka spasi/jarak dari table 123 mendatar dan 12345..dst menurun.dengan memakai kode: cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" kita gunakan ini untuk jarak sepasi yang tidak terlalu lebar,karna jika terlalu lebar sepasinya, akan mengurangi jatah lebarnya halaman yang sudah kita tentukan tadi.Lantutkan membaca»

Si eres aficionado a la F1 y sueles usar Dashboard, te propongo un Widget que te tendrá informado de las próximas carreras, con todo tipo de detalle sobre los circuitos, donde se disputarán... etc.

Yo lo tengo instalado y realmente es útil para echarle un vistazo de vez en cuando, sólo pesa 1,1 Mb y es gratuito.

Puedes descargarlo directamente desde aquí o visitar su página Web, donde también puedes acceder desde el propio widget para ampliar la información.

Until now that is.

This evening I found polldaddy.

Yay.

Check out the ultra cool poll widget on the right :)