Wetpaint is officially launching their whiteboard wiki app for Facebook tomorrow morning, although it's been alive and kicking in Facebook's apps directory for the past two weeks. The idea behind it is about as simple as it gets--just stick an entire Wetpaint wiki inside of Facebook, and edit things with your Facebook friends. In addition to a blank canvas to do whatever you want with, the service has also included student-geared templates to get you going, including a notes tool, party planner, and dorm hall wiki. The real draw here is that you'll be able to start making and sharing Wetpaint wikis without the need to sign up for the service, and be able to be share any of your creations via URL to people outside of Facebook. The only catch is that your Facebook-created wikis won't show up on Wetpaint's main site, at least not yet.
Make widget-filled wikis right inside of Facebook using Wetpaint's Whiteboard Wiki app.
(Credit: CNET Networks)What I don't get about the whole app is why you'd want to use some of these templates inside of Facebook. For example, the selling point of the party invitation app is that you can set up RSVPs and upload photos and videos. You can already do all these things in Facebook using the first-party events app that everyone's got by default. The same thing goes for class notes, which encourages grouping and discussion forums--something which is also available for everyone right off the bat with Facebook groups.
Speaking of groups, Wetpaint also goes a step beyond, by auto-creating a wiki for every group you're a member of. On the surface, this might seem like a handy way to help you get started in your wiki indeavors, although it feels more like the service is attempting to drag participation and interaction away from Facebook's group, and into their own domain.
The real saving grace of this app is that you can add third-party widgets onto one big page along with the rest of your content--something I had wanted after taking a look at the Amnesty Hypercube Facebook app last week. The fact that you can drop any old embed code to create a new widget means you're getting a lot of extensibility with one app. This is the kind of thing that can open up creativity and participation. Trying to piggyback on Facebook's successful, and easy-to-use features with a whole other system--not so much. Hopefully Wetpaint can find a balance.
Been looking for a way to get the 'peanut butter jelly time' guy onto Facebook? Look no longer.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Amnesty Hypercube, which is probably the best name I've seen this year, has a new Facebook app that's pretty handy if you're a user of their desktop application. Like its other "Amnesty" services, the new app from the folks at Mesa Dynamics takes pretty much any widget code you can throw at it, and runs it in Facebook. In turn, it syncs up with Amnesty's desktop widget app, meaning any widgets you add at home will be available without having to re-add them.
There are several reasons why this is useful. One is for the widgets you enjoy using on your iGoogle page, or OS X Dashboard can now be viewed right in Facebook instead. If you're the kind of person who spends a lot of time there, this might beat keeping an extra browser tab open. This also takes an extra step out of managing one of your Facebook apps, which is especially helpful if you've got quite a few.
The only bummer here is the interface which relegates each widget to its own mini tab in Facebook, meaning you can't view all of them at once like you can with other widget services. You also can't stick them on your profile, which could arguably be a good thing considering how crowded people's profiles have become. What I was really hoping for with this service, was a way to take any widget code and stick it on your profile similar to what you can do with MySpace, although in a more user friendly fashion, and without the need to add a new Facebook application every time. I'm not saying the idea here isn't well-founded, but if you're looking for straight up widgets, you're probably better off using a bona fide widget aggregation site than surfing a bunch of tabs.
Amnesty Hypercube is a small application for Windows XP, Vista, and Mac OS X that will help you pull bits of Web content to use as widgets. These widgets can be brought up or dismissed ad hoc, or added to your desktop as a permanent fixture. Besides its cool name (second only to flux capacitor), the service is not so different from many existing widget platforms, like Yahoo Widgets, OS X's Dashboard, or the Windows Vista sidebar. Yet the company is taking a slightly different approach, one a little closer to Yourminis, which uses Adobe Integrated Runtime to run widgets on your desktop.
The application has a built-in directory of widget sites, which acts as a mini-Web browser to take you to places such as Finetune, last.fm, and eBay's eBay To Go widget maker. Once you've found embed code on a site's original page, copying the code to your clipboard will automatically turn it into a desktop widget. Of course, you could accomplish something similar using Mesa Dynamics' other tool--Amnesty Generator, which will convert all sorts of Web widget code into widget-friendly code for other platforms.
One nice feature on the Mac and Vista version is that you can "push" a Hypercube widget to OS X's dashboard or the Vista sidebar with two clicks. Also neat is its multiwidget desktop functionality (hence the cube name), which lets you organize your widgets on several virtual desktops. You can add more widgets and switch between them from the drop-down menu that installs itself on your system toolbar. It's a little bit like the upcoming Spaces feature in OS X Leopard, but not nearly as flashy.
The only real snag I ran into using the application was surfing through the widget directory. Since it's a miniaturized browser, pages are often cropped below their native size, unless you are using a wide-screen display or are running your computer at a high resolution. This means there's a lot more scrolling both up and down, as well as side to side, if you're on a laptop or small screen. I'd also like to see the service add a right-click contextual menu to let you create a widget from any embed code you run into while browsing on your regular browser. Currently, you have to copy and paste code into a preferences box on the application.
Mesa Dynamics is planning to add a few more features to the beta release, including sharable cubes (similar to the publicly shared page directories on single-page aggregators), cube customizations such as backgrounds and color schemes, and a tool to push a widget collection to Apple's iPhone.
Grab widgets from all over the Web and put them on your desktop. If you're a Mac or Vista user, you can also push widgets to Dashboard or the sidebar to use the native widget tools.
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