Its taken way to long but finally our services page has been update. Take a look!

This might sound weird coming from a widget developer but maybe there are too many widgets.

Now, let me qualify that statement by saying that maybe there are too many widgets that don’t actually serve a purpose. Even within our own collection of widgets we have those that are useful and those that are just plain silly. Stephen Ralph says:

“As an online marketer I’m constantly scouring the NET looking for the latest and greatest technologies, widgets, etc. to optimize my websites and blogs with…but in the long run do widgets like MyBlogLog, BlogRush, etc. really offer any value to YOU and YOUR online marketing efforts? ”

(via stephenralph.com - Widget Free Blogging)

And I am inclined to agree, even popular widgets, like those from MyBlogLog which claim to offer the blogger a service (being able to see who has visited your website), but are, in the end, nothing more than ads that do not benefit the blogger.

That said, there is a place for silly, pointless widgets. Take a look on MySpace or Facebook and you will see tons of picture slide shows, weird quote things and I Can Has Cheezburger. Why do people use these widgets? Because they help express their identity, or at least show others what they are interested in. So really it comes down to what you are trying to accomplish and who your target audience is - which, if I remember correctly, is straight out of the textbook for Marketing 101.

Still, I think there is a case to be made for raising the bar on portable, widget-like content. Now that we, as an internet community, are starting to get the hang of what widgets are and what they can do it is time to take them to a higher level. We’ve played, we’ve had our fun. Now its time to make something creative, usable, and useful.

Or, poll, as it were. Found this on Widgify.

Widget Developer Survey.

It will be interesting to see what the results are though there could easily be more options than the ones presented. For instance, the ease of porting a widget to new platforms is important for me anyway, and that really isn’t an option though it could fall under the “distribution” one. It would also be interesting to know how many people answered the poll.

Only 13 more days until Widget Summit. We aren’t going because we are busy, but it sounds like it will be a good event. Anyone thinking seriously about developing in the widget space should consider attending this conference.

The candidate widgets are now available as Facebook applications thanks to the Widgetbox App Accelerator. Go to the candidates page, pick your candidate and show your support for the 2008 presidential elections on Facebook. Then, share them with your friends!

Muse Storm is a new widget content and syndication platform. Its kind of neat. I guess. But it looks like that, among other things, their widgets are just our RSS Scroller but with more customization options. Granted they also provide you with analytics and other widget form factors like desktop widgets, but still - not offering a whole lot more that what is already available.

I think they are trying to appeal to the content producer, saying “use our system to provide your audience widgets.” That is a great idea, however, I feel that people that really want a custom widget for their site -branded, custom features, etc. - won’t be satisfied with just a cookie-cutter widget that will look and function like all the rest.

But, I do not actually know what they are trying to do, so there you go. We try not to take ourselves too seriously here at WidgetNest.

(As an aside, I am sure we are not the first people to think up the “+ Add this widget” phraseology but since we have started doing that on our own widgets I have seen a lot more that look exactly like ours. I am probably just being vain.)

Team WidgetNest is happy to annouce that we have chosen Widgetbox as our exclusive distribution partner. Using the Widgetbox system will help us to focus on widget development and not have to worry about integrating in to different platforms. Our widgets will be available anywhere Widgetbox widgets can go, which is a lot of places. In light of this partnership, we have updated our site to reflect the change. Now each widget page provides a link to the proper page on Widgetbox where a user can get their widget.

We are looking forward to working with Widgetbox and we are excited by this unique opportunity.

Netscape.com’s Digg-like social network has been moved to a new url and has been given a new name, Propeller. In light of this change, we have updated our Netscape news widget to reflect the new name. We did this because we do not want to be misleading. The news was no longer coming from Netscape.com and we did not want the people seeing the widget to be mistaken. Thanks for understanding.

Been playing around inside of Facebook. Awesome development platform. It really is amazing, but I am also worried about its viability as a long standing solution. Its good to know it now, of course, but what happens next year when everyone leaves for a different social network? Anyway, thats an argument for another day.

Our two latest widgets:

I can has cheezburger

Technorati Blog Response

Both of these widgets are a result of slow work days. The I Can Has Cheezeburger widget shows the latest pics from the lolcat blog icanhascheezburger.com. The Technorati widget, when placed on a website, shows the latest blog entries from the web about that website.

There are some pretty cool projects going on in the background. I wish I could say more about them but we don’t want to give our enemies the competition any details. Not that we have much competition. Speaking of which, we should start a widget prank war somehow. Or some kind of widget race. Yeah. Anyway, we will keep you posted.