Here is quick roundup of this week’s interesting widget news, trends and analysis:
- Britney Spear Tour Widgets Makes Debut
All artists need them, smart artists have them – widgets! Britney’s social media manager Lauren Kozak announces a new widget to celebrate the second North American leg of Britney's tour. - Digital Photo Frame Widgets are the Future!
This week Sungale announced a Wifi Widget photo frame with a 800 x 600 resolution touchscreen boasts 512 MB of internal storage for only $165 (available next month). Expect to see digital photo frames become mainstream (probably this Christmas) as more intelligence and functionality is built into them. I think the real value (and money) is in MANAGING the content that goes out on these digital internet-enabled photo frames. One of our clients, FrameChannel, does exactly this and has a phenomenal service aimed at delivering almost any type of content (Photos, News, Twitter, Facebook, i.e.) via digital photo frames! - Your are Never Too Old to Make a Widget – IBM Widgets for LinkedIn
Its probably been a while since many of us use a product from IBM (remember Lotus Notes), but the company recently announced the first two in a new initiative to develop widgets for a wide variety of business needs including TripIt and LinkedIn apps integratd into Lotus Notes desktop! - Vendors Start Announcing and Releasing Yahoo TV Widgets and FiOS TV Widgets
Sonic Solutions announced a Roxio CinemaNow Yahoo! TV Widget (available in the fall) that allows users to search, rent and buy movies. Interative TV games provider, PlayJam is planning to offer a Yahoo TV widget. Verizon is bringing Twitter, Facebook and YouTube widgets to its FiOS TV platform. Vizio announced that some popular services including eBay, Facebook, Twitter, Rallypoint Sports, Showtime, Revision3, Radiotime, and Vudu, will be available on their HDTV’s, powered by the Yahoo TV Widgets engine. Microsoft's Xbox 360 already features Netflix Watch Instantly, and later this fall will also offer Facebook and Twitter.