widget

Intellicast weather service rolled out a new beta version of its site last week. Users have access to all the usual Internet weather services like local, national, and international forecasts, plus daily summaries with detailed information. For those who are wary to ditch their speedy weather widget to check the forecast, Intellicast employs Ajax for no-loading browsing--making it a fair bit more compelling than the average Internet weather service.

I could go on with boring details about barometric pressure and how the sunrise and sunset icons make me happy, but I'll spare you. You can check out Intellicast beta here.… Read more

There's no denying it. Hoooka has a killer name. Its motto ("Take a hit, pass it on") is pretty good too. But this new side project of the Indie 911 social network, which launched in beta earlier this week, isn't particularly momentous. The central concept behind Hoooka, according to the company, is enabling "both artists and fans to play, share, promote and sell their favorite digital media."

But that's really nothing new. Amie Street, which we covered a while back and then revisited more recently, is an independent music retailer that features embeddable … Read more

Single page aggregators, also known as personalized home pages, can be a helpful way to keep tabs on your favorite Web content without having to visit each site. With nearly all of them able to display content from popular Web sites, choosing one comes down personal taste. We've run down some of the most popular aggregators, citing what works and what doesn't.

My.Netscape relaunched today, providing users with an Ajax-driven drag-and-drop interface to add and customize newsfeeds. There are about a hundred premade feeds to choose from. If you want to add a site that's not … Read more

As any avid--and increasingly, non-avid--gamer can tell you, the Nintendo Wii is harder to find than an urban square mile without a Starbucks. Up until recently, I was one of those people vainly rechecking Amazon.com and calling every Best Buy, Circuit City, and CompUSA within a 30-mile radius to see if they had any in stock. It was frustrating, of course, but not for the reasons you may think. Constantly hearing "not in stock" wasn't the problem; rather, it was annoying because the whole process took a lot of work. And this was after I thought … Read more

eSnips, the social networking and content-hosting service, is quintupling the storage on users accounts to 5GB. The company is also adding new music-sharing features that let users create embeddable music widgets and playlists for use on eSnips user pages, blogs, Web sites, and social networking sites like MySpace. The service ties into the eSnips marketplace, which lets you buy and sell user-generated content like photos and music.

We covered eSnips last year and noted its similarity to social bookmarking site Del.icio.us mixed with content hosting like you'd find on social networking sites. Since then, eSnips claims to … Read more

This post has been updated from the original. Added: Hands-on video with Amnesty Generator.

For those early adopters out there with Windows Vista, you might be struggling to get some widgets from the Web onto your flashy, new sidebar. To help you out is Amnesty Generator, a small and free app that converts nearly every type of online widget into the 'gadget format' that's compatible with Vista's new desktop toolbar. Using the program requires no coding experience; it's as simple as pasting in the embedding code, and the program does the rest.

Amnesty generator works with Google homepage widgets, … Read more

You might have noticed on my Trillian Astra review earlier this week that I used a sliding image-gallery widget to showcase all of the screenshots. That sliding image widget came from the folks at Goodwidgets, a service that provides users with seven free widgets for photo sharing.

Once you've picked your favorite widget, you can upload photos from Flickr, Photobucket, 23 photo-sharing service, or your hard drive. From there, you have a few options to tweak, like color schemes and how big you want it. When you're done adding photos and getting it just the way you want … Read more

Cellblock is an interesting live photo dropbox. Images or videos sent to a user's Cellblock e-mail address are displayed immediately on said user's Cellblock widgets.

Here's a use case: Say I set up a "cellblock" (as each account is called) for a trade show I am attending, and I embed a widget for that show's cellblock in my blog. Then every time I take a camera-phone image from the show and send it via MMS or e-mail to the e-mail address of the cellblock, the photo immediately shows up in the blog's widget. … Read more

Disney.com unveiled its new look this morning. Announced last month at CES by CEO Bob Iger, the new Disney.com aims to bring more personalization to the site and cash in on provide Disney content to share with others. Funny thing is, you can't even share the content on outside sites like MySpace or blogs.

It's downright tough to find the new personalized area of Disney.com, but it's called XD. The Flash-based XD interface takes about half a minute to load, and you're greeted to a smattering of widgets featuring Disney content that appears … Read more