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Desktop and Web Widgets

By: Charlene Blohm

1/1/2009

Widgets offer both productivity and visibility. Here’s a primer to help you learn how to use and embrace these information and social-media tools.

  1. What is a widget?

    Desktop and Web WidgetsA widget is a digital gadget. Some desktop widgets come pre-installed with your OS, enabling tools such as news aggregators, stock market tickers, calculators, or world clocks to be just a mouse-click away– no internet access required. A web widget is a small chunk of code that displays content from an online source, and can be inserted into a blog, web page, or social networking site. A wide variety of widgets are available online, most free of charge, that can provide weather forecasts for your website, PayPal capabilities to your blog, even education-industry news on your iPhone. Widgets are installed via download or with a simple copy and paste. Ever watched a YouTube video on someone’s blog? A few lines of HTML code pasted into the blog made that widget work.

  2. What are some common uses of web widgets?

    Web widgets can be used to personalize your start page, allowing access to favorite web content simply by opening your browser. You can introduce live-chat capabilities with meebo me, an instant-messaging widget that creates a personalized IM window. There are also specialized widgets offered within online communities, such as Facebook, that allow members to easily share recommendations for books, movies, and more. Many blog sites offer their own widgets to facilitate online commerce, upload photos, or get feedback from visitors.

  3. How do I find widgets?

    If you want to expand your desktop widget collection, you’ll find thousands of Windows and Mac desktop widgets here, including Yahoo’s popular Day Planner that combines numerous daily events and to-do lists into one small, interactive desktop window. Web widgets can be found at iGoogle, MyYahoo!, netvibes.com, pageflakes.com, or Widgetbox.com, among others.