WidgetNest team member David has recently accepted a position with the awesome team at Widgetbox. (See his own take in it here.) What does this mean for WidgetNest? Most likely we will no longer be accepting client work. We will continute to mantain what widgets we have developed and serve so far.

Don’t worry about us. We have lots of other projects and ideas unrelated to widgets that we are sure will be awesome.

Keep checking back for more updates. In the mean time, we thank everyone that we have worked with and worked for over the last year and half or so. Also, a big thank you to our users. You all are awesome.

Thanks!

A long time ago, back when Netscape.com was a sort of Digg.com clone we made a widget that showed the top Netscape stories. Later, AOL (who own Netscape) decided to move it to Propeller.com - well recently they changed the scope of Propeller.com again. Now it still has news but it is less like a Digg.com clone. Actually, it seems to be full of a lot of spam and inappropriate content. Sad, really. The original (well, the original NEW Netscape) was actually pretty cool.

Oh well. To keep with the times we’ve updated the Propeller widget but it isn’t what it used to be. Goodbye Propeller. If you change again we probably wont keep up. This is the end.

As part of our ongoing quest for excellence, it is our pleasure to introduce to the world Project Naberhackey. Nabberhacky is the code name for our current widget project. What is it? You ask. I will tell you.

We are building a widget editing/management system that would give users total control over their widgets. So, unlike sites like Widgetbox that allow you to configure widgets and embed them on certain pages, we are hoping to allow users to actually host their configurations of the widgets on their own servers as well as provide instructions for distribution and maintainance. The technology behind this is going to be pretty slick, though I must say that this first version will be pretty basic. We have decided to take a very itterative approach with this project as will be rolling out updates pretty constantly over a longer period of time after initial release.

There are two main forces behind this project. First, a lot of our core business has been customizing widgets we have already made for others’ use. We do get to work on some new and different widgets now and again, but mainly people want skinned versions of some of our more popular content. This tool will allow its users to do the skinning easily on their own, then download the finished product. Second, we believe that as the web moves forward, while there is substantial hype about distributed systems and cloud computing, that at the end of the day people are going to want control over their assets. Since users will be able to download copies of the widgets they configure, they have total control over them.

As I said a few posts ago. We are striving to be more open about our work. I hope to have more to share with you soon. Thanks.

Hello friends, family, followers, and strangers. WidgetNest, in a move to complete some internal projects and development, had decided to go on Sabbatical from client work. From now until the end of the summer we are not taking any new client work. At the end of the summer we should have some stuff to show.

We will try and put updates here when we can. Until then, keep it real. See you on the other side.

Love,

Team WidgetNest

Have you had a change to check out Yahoo! Buzz? Pretty nifty service.

“Yahoo! Buzz features the most popular stories right now, determined by people around the Web.” Buzz is generated by user voting in a Digg-style ranking system. Stories are subimtted by publishers.

Just for fun we made a widget that shows the top stories from the Yahoo! Buzz home page. We are piggybacking on another amazing service, Dapper, to extract the data.

Check it out: Yahoo! Buzz Top Stories Widget

Our This or That widget is already more popular than some of the presidential candidates. What does that mean? Well….. that …. something.

In light of our recent release of the VariableLoader Class, we have put together a page to house more code resources, as they come: The WidgetNest Code Page. Right now, you may notice, it only has one item on it, but as we march forward, more will be made available, so check back often, or subscribe to the feed.

A long time ago, I made a little news ticker widget for Digg.com. I made it for myself because I couldn’t find anything else like it. Today, finally, it has been moved to its new home here at WidgetNest. So, be sure to check out the widget that started it all: the Digg Ticker.

‘Facebook fatigue’ kicks in as people tire of social networks | The Register

The above linked article talks about how people are becoming bored with social networks. In general, I agree. The only reason I even have an account on Facebook (the only site I use, even) is so that I can keep up with some of my old acquaintances. Onces we find eachother, however, we can usually take the conversation off the network and in to the real world. Social networks don’t have anything to keep me coming back.

Another part of the article talks about widget developers:

And the “widget economy”, where developers cobble together web
applications in the hope of grabbing their own slice of the riches
social networking’s massive personal data warehouses promised?
Well the business model for RockYou pretty much sums it up. The
startup, that owns the number three Facebook App “Super Wall”, only
sells advertising to other Facebook App developers.

That is why I am glad we do things a little differently at WidgetNest. We aren’t out trying to make tons of money with our applications on Facebook. In fact, last quarter our Widgetbox devshare earnings on Facebook were less than $2. Instead, we are widget developers. We make widgets for other people, and not always for social networks. Basically, we are a web design/development company that specializes in widgets.

Widgets are an intriguing platform, but when a widget is dependent upon some other platform, like MySpace or Facebook, it becomes tied to the success of that platform. That makes the widget vulnerable. A real widget should have its own backbone, its own legs to stand on.

Just updated the WidgetNest home page.

Looks pretty good I think, then again I am biased. Look at all we’ve gotten done and its only February 1st! This really will be the year of the widget, or, at least the year of “WidgetNest gets things done.”