I started using Yahoo Widgets a good long time ago, and I’ve been meaning to post about it, but I just haven’t gotten around to it. I’ve also been thinking about starting a Wednesday’s Widget over at Two Guys Tech, but you guessed it, I haven’t had a chance to do that either.

Well, here’s a sneak peek. I’ve actually been using a few widgets just to test them out, and I’ll give a quick rundown here.

Calvin and Hobbes Cartoon Fetcher by Neo - I love Calvin and Hobbes. Although I’m a little ashamed to admit it, I stopped reading them when new cartoons weren’t being made anymore. Well never fear! If you’re like me, you probably forgot many or most of the Calvin and Hobbes strips. This Widget lets you fetch them. It can be easily minimized, and you can move to previous strips. The thing I like is that it remembers which one you left off on, so you can just increment forward until you’re all caught up.

Gorgy Clock by Luis Uguina - There can be many reasons why you need a clock on your desktop. If you do need one, check this one out. Not only does this one allow you to set unlimited alarms, and allow you to change the colors, but you can also sync it with an atomic clock. Great clock!

Generic Countdown Timer by Laurent Cozic - I downloaded this Widget so that I could set a timer for how long I was going to work without checking email. It’s great really. You can modify the timer’s colors, and the alarm isn’t too bad, stopping after a few seconds. Great little timer.

Posted in widgets, LinkLove No Comments »

Well, Art has been going a little crazy with his blog, but it looks like he’s finally done. While he was gone on vacation, his router at home decided it was going on vacation too. Which made all of his web sites inaccessible.

What’s worse is that the web sites didn’t know this, and they just thought no one was visiting. Their anxiety over this caused many long term effects. Don’t worry, Art arranged therapy for them, went out and put a new theme on them, and everyone is feeling much better now. I think the final product is very nice indeed.

Unfortunately, I don’t see my beloved tag cloud.

Speaking of tag clouds, I noticed it when first launched, but Phil placed the new  Amazon “Product Cloud” over on Tech Fires. Amazon introduced a number of new widgets recently, and the product cloud is one of them. Of course, you have to be an affiliate, Amazon uses the term associate, to use them.

If you are an affiliate, you should check them out though, some of them look pretty neat. I joined Amazon just so I could recommend books when I write about them, but these new widgets are so snazzy that I may just have to put one up.

Of course, adding widgets isn’t the only thing that Phil has been doing, Scott from My Thermos has joined him in writing his “Rapid Fire Reviews of Hot Technology. Between the two of them, they did 23 posts just in the past 5 weekdays. That’s pretty impressive, especially considering they both have their own blogs, and hold down day jobs.

Hooray! It looks like Pearl is back to her regular posting habits over at Interesting Observations. I didn’t realize it, but it was the Smiley faces anniversary Monday. At least the emoticon smiley face.

Personally, I have been pretty busy this week, so I haven’t had that much time to read my RSS feeds, and less time to leave comments. To make matters worse, Scott sent me an invite to Jango, which is pretty cool. He also sent me an invite to Rescue Time, which has been pretty stable. Once I have more time to play with them, I’ll write something up.

Posted in Affiliate, Random, WebServices, widgets, WebSites, Add-Ons, LinkLove 38 Comments »

I saw BlogRush for the first time on Phil’s new blog Tech Fires, and I was a little curious. Then I followed the link from his widget, and I started to get really excited. This is really a great idea, and I wish I had thought of it.

You display a widget on your blog, much like the one pictured below. The widget has 5 links in it, which open up in a new window if one of your readers clicks on it. Every time you have a page load, a link to one of your posts is displayed somewhere else.

That’s right. One page load = one link. What is even better is that when you sign up, you choose a category for your blog. Your widget shows links from that category, and your link is displayed on other blogs in that category. In other words, your link is being displayed to readers who are already reading topics close to yours.

Now I thought that was well worth putting the widget on my site. Then I found out that BlogRush also acts like a pyramid scheme.

For every person who follows your referral id, or clicks on your widget, and signs up, you get a credit. Every page load they have, you get your link displayed on another blog.

The referrals from your referral count for you too, down through 10 generations of referrals. After so many generations, it isn’t one for one, but it is still better than nothing.

The only thing that I didn’t like is that you can’t choose a size for the widget. That is why it is a little larger than my sidebar. I was planning on resizing the sidebar’s a little bit anyway, I’ll just have to do it sooner. 

Posted in Promotion, widgets, RSS, Recommendations, Blogging, Web Tools 3 Comments »