Category widget

Listphile

I started playing with the Listphile service. This service allows a user to create and manage Lists of Items. One can create either some standard lists, such as text, people lists, video lists, images lists and an atlas. Or one can add fields at will to create one's own list. In order to experiment a bit, I create a list with sundials. I added some fields to the standard atlas list to suit my need.

This service offers many features of desktop MicroContent Clients, so I will discuss the service using that checklist.

The first check is whether the Items in Listphile are MicroContent. Indeed these Items support structure, are flexible (one can extend them) and offer some MicroWeb possibilities through links. There are standard fields, such as titles, descriptions and tags. And each Item has a permalink.

The interface consists of only 2 web-pages: a View-pane and a Items-pane. The View-pane shows a single Item, the location is shown on a map. The Items-pane can be set to maps, lists or thumbnails mode. There are limited sorting possibilities. A separate page is available for a tag cloud.

The service has standard Item functions for viewing, adding, editing and deleting Items. There are only limiting functions for a List itself (editing title, address, etc.).

There are only limited functions for importing an exporting, i.e. no importing and exporting only as RSS and embedded Lists.

The fact that this service is on Internet allows to add some news features. A List can be a social List. This means that multiple authors can work on a single List (still have to check this out). And to help here one has the possibility to see authors and what has been edited. There is some moderation and access control. It is also possible to comment on an Item or author.

I miss the import and export possibilities. I would like to exporting as KML and OPML. I am now locked in. The service is still in beta and I did see some minor errors, but overall it works great.

Categories/tags: MicroContent • client • service • widget • field • location • tag • mashing • type , listphile
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iPhone as widget platform

The talk by Ajit Jaokar was really an eye-opener for me. Widgets are key.

The iPhone is usually perceived as a closed system. There is no SDK, so application developers can not add new things to it. It is true, but the question is whether this hampers the functional broadness of the device.

One might see the inclusion of the Safari web-browser as the inclusion of a widget management system. Each widget that can be accessed through the browser adds a new application to the device. And each application adds new functionality.

It is not as good as a real application, but will probably suffice for many users. I guess it will become easy to access (and save?) widgets. It will not be as good as real applications, it will less integrated, but probably will do very well for now.

How much widget management this browser will offer is also interesting to see. Can widgets be cached? Can I create bookmarks for each widget? Can I create an app icon for each widget promoting it to app level? Many interesting questions.

Categories/tags: MicroContent • client • application • widget
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Ajit Jaokar talk

Key is understanding the terms, such as web2.0. He uses o'Reilly as basis: web as platform, harnessing collective intelligence. Mobile Web 2.0 just at the device to Web 2.0. (how many web enabled mobile devices are there?) However standards on mobiles are still lacking. Widgets might help here. Widget Widget Web. Web is breaking up into small pieces. Widgets seem to be the web-pages of the future.

Ajit sees intertwingularity as key. One should not look at information as a hierarchy, but as network. Web 2.0 is pushing content out.

The idea of widgets as the new web-page for mobile devices is a nice eye-opener. I think I like that. I would call a widget then a MicroContent Client, but then for specific devices. The widgets I looked at from a MicroContent Client perspective are extremely simple clients from a functional perspective.

So I guess the idea that Apple sees Ajax as key for apps on the iPhone is a very important step. Are widgets easy to create? Ajit thinks yes, it however seems still difficult to me. Still waiting for widgets. (Check out widsets.com for creating widgets). Should become very easy. Problem is however that installing widgets is still difficult.

Is iPhone a walled garden? Yes and No. Yes form an app point of view. No from a a web-view. Widgets might feel like as apps. If the iPhone supports nice bookmarking, the user might not see the difference.

Problem are the adults, digital divide here. Is a societal issue. Losing the elders? What is the influence on social issues? But I guess we talk about the whole Internet here and how it changes society.

Services as Facebook might lead the field towards widget adoption and aid in adoption. Japan and Korea are not an example for Europe or US.

Categories/tags: MicroContent • articles • client • widget , microlearning2007
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Widgets predictions

Erick Schonfeld predicts that 2007 will be the year of the widget.

I agree, I will add this to my list of predictions as well. Widgets point to something new, another way to re-use data. The idea of widgets is nothing new. Yahoo had it already many years ago and could be used to create a personal start-page. But that was only limited to widgets and data offered by Yahoo. The new thing is that one can mix data from multiple services. This is not very new either. I had weather and statistics widgets on my homepage many, many years ago.

Many of the ideas in widgets have been around a long time. I find it difficult to grasp what it is now different. One thing that is different is the visibility. It is now much more common (although far from mainstream) than before. There are many more widgets around. I find the most interesting the de-coupling of widget-code and data. Thus one can define a RSS-widget separate from the data. This can be extended to the enclosures in RSS.

Widgets are still a bit gimmicky. When will they be more useful on an enterprise level? For my business site, I only use Google Maps as widgets..

[Inspiration Marc Canter]

Categories/tags: MicroContent • client • widget • mashing
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Widget services ramping up

Read/Write Web notes the increasing importance of widgets. Basically a widget is an user interface to some data somewhere on the web. One can see these widgets on computers, such as MacOSX. But now also on web-pages. I do not quite get it why they are becoming so popular now. Widgets are nothing new. We have had them around for a long time. Think of counters, weather, chat, etc. Naturally RSS does help a lot and I assume that many widgets are just specific interfaces for a specific RSS-feed. At least that is what I see on the Mac. Now that I am using Sandvox to create some of my web-site, I started to widgets more fully. I use them to access Del.icio.us and Flickr. And the interface is very simple. Widgets are a great way of mashing multiple MicroContent Types. This is either done by the web-site developer or by the end-user, as in personalised pages.

[Inspiration Read/Write Web]

Categories/tags: MicroContent • client • widget
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Ecol Widget

Ecol is a nice MacOSX widget showing a cartoon. I did not try it for long, but I assume that it is updated regularly.  I like this widget as in this way cartoons also become MicroContent. I assume that behind this, there is just a RSS-feed. But it is a beginning towards a MicroContent client for cartoons.

Categories/tags: client • widget
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Whiskies MicroContent

Hawk Innovations published a MacOSX-widget for viewing information on Whiskies. Basically this is a frontend to the Whisky database from Whisky magazine. I fidn this a good example of another kind of MicroContent that is repurposed in an interesting way.

Categories/tags: client • widget , microcontent; widget; whisky;
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Widget: Maui Real Estate

I like this widget from a structured MicroContent view. The user can define a search query and will see a list of houses for sale. For each house he will a small summary (image, price, surface, address, #bedrooms, #bathrooms). Already this list makes this widget for me interesting. I see structure and I see Items. This surely is a MicroContent Widget. And the query interface adds something interesting to it. Clicking on an Item will open the corresponding web-page. Also not that this is another MicroContent type: a housing listing.

Categories/tags: client • widget , microcontent; widget; type; listing;
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Elementary MicroContent

I noticed two widgets (Elements and PTSmall) that display a periodic table of elements. Clicking on an element reveals some information about that element. This is very similar to a MicroContent client. The elements are here the Items and any information about an element is structured MicroContent. There is a small View-pane, a large Items-pane (the periodic table) and even Lists (Halogens, etc.) marked in colour. The number of Items is pretty fixed and probably the information about an element as well.
 
I can even imagine that such MicroContent is part of a MicroWeb. Any mention of an element could refer to more information about that element. These widgets offer very limited information, so something more elaborate would be needed. Anyway add Elements as a new MicroContent type.

Categories/tags: client • widget , microcontent; widget; type; elements;
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MicroContent Widgets

I started looking at the widgets on MacOS-X to see whether some special is done with it. But I noticed that I first should define a MicroContent widget. When can I call a widget a MicroContent widget?
 
I am not sure yet. Some widgets just refer to a web-page and have no intelligence themselves. Those widgets are not interesting. At least one should be able to view a MicroContent item and that can be some summary information. Any widget that uses RSS to get the information is a MicroContent widget, but naturally I am looking for other applications.

Categories/tags: client • widget , microcontent; widget; macosx;
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Widget: DashCook

DashCook is created by Jeremy Bilien / Alexandre Despallieres and is basically an RSS-reader. You can subscribe to various recipe feeds. For each recipe (item) you see the title and a summary. Clicking on the title leads you to the website. The main interface can be seen as an Items-pane. It seems that you can only subscribe to a single channel, i.e. recipe category. The channels refer to RSS-feeds of various websites. Also the search-field links to a website.
 
From a MicroContent point of view it is a bit disappointing. It is just RSS. And I rather would see the whole recipes and not be put through to a website.

Categories/tags: client • widget
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