Snipperoo

FREE Blogging Platform with Widgets

Terapad is a great blogging platform. And not just a blogging platform - it offers a bunch more value, such as shops, forums, web pages - everything you could want. It also allows you to add all sorts of things in and to totally redesign your whole site if you wish. And you can add Snipperoo easily to your site.  Here's our test site.
The best news today - it's now completely FREE. Well, it does carry advertising, but it's the most powerful free platform I've come across. 

Five Things

You Don't Know About Me
Bloggers 'fess up to five things with the tag line 'not a lot of people know that'.
Tagged by Manoj to continue the meme, here are my five:

1. I was absent without leave from the French army for seven years
2. My first business venture was a punk fanzine in 1977
3. I invented the term and concept Cybercafe
4. My mother was born in China and my father in South Africa
5. I was at art college with Damien Hirst

Cheers and a Happy New Year

Scoble gets Widget religion

Robert Scoble clicks with widgets. We're going to see a lot of action in the coming year.  Scobleizer - Tech Geek Blogger.

But there is something in the air. Spending a few hours at Google got me excited again. I’m playing with a Blogger blog just to play around away from public view.

I am playing with JavaScript and all the latest gadgets and gidgets and widgets and code (Mark Lucovsky hates calling them anything but code, by the way, cause he says looking at it any other way starts to limit your thinking. He pointed out that most gadgets on blogs are rectangular. He asked me “why do they need to do that?” Then he showed me lots of examples where code sprayed results into the page in a totally non-rectangular way. And the stuff he demoed on maps is cool. I’ll get that video up for Christmas so we can all spend Christmas break copying JavaScripts from each other and playing around.

Joho the Blog

Line of the week from Joho the Blog.

I'm at the Reykjavik airport, waiting for the flight to Paris for Le Web (formerly Le Blog, and before that Le Usenet and, originally, Le Cuneiform).

Small is the new big (widgetisation)

Dany Taylor blogs widgets at the fabric of folly
He offers six reasons why widgets are suddenly looking interesting - we like the sixth:

6.) Small is the new big

A more fundamental reason why widgets are starting to take off is the broader shift towards smaller, more rapidly developed applications and increasing hybridisation by means of mash-ups and APIs. One only need compare the protracted product development cycle of Microsoft Office (gap between releases: 4 years) with the iterative development of Google Docs and Spreadsheets to see where things are headed. Widgets fit perfectly into this new landscape of smaller, simpler, connected apps.

SplashCast - Social Media Syndication

Hey, SplashCast have a great blog and it's even better when they quote me. Looking forward to their launch.

People Want Stuff For Their Sites or Hey Baby What’s Your Widget?

Some quotes from Ivan Pope of Snipperoo, who just spoke at Widgets Live on the topic of widgets aggregators.

“We encourage a million widget world”

“Keep your hands off my widgets”

“Online ads and affiliate marketing will spawn widget marketing”

“You will put your blog in your stuff not your stuf in your blog.”

“Sites will be constructed entirely of widgets.”

And this from BamBam of the AOL team:

“Hey, baby, what’s your widget?”

Wrap-Up from Widgets Live

From Liz Gannes on  GigaOM : Wrap-Up from Widgets Live.

Ivan Pope, Snipperoo (this guy was full of catchy quotes that seemed just a tiny bit beyond our grasp): “Widgets are the bumper stickers of the internet.” Fittingly, this came as a bumper sticker. And a t-shirt.

The cutest bumpersticker

From Stephanie Bambam here

They Bring You the Widgets..

          

Ed Anuff from Widgetbox started off this panel by giving a demo of their site, which is a very slick directory of various widgets that work in different places. The more places their widgets work the better, of course, and the intent is to have them working all ovver.

Next up was Snipperoo, who I have to admit, I'd never heard of before, although they did leave the cutest bumpersticker on my chair with the phrase "widgets are the bumper stickers of the Internet." They're rather quotable - one line from the demo - "You will put your blog in your stuff, not your stuff in your blog." They're all about "universal widgets" - widgets that work anywhere. More than just a directory, unique widgets you can use on any site.

Off to Q&A - do we really need a widget aggregator? Widgetbox's position is - yes. Publishing platforms have other things to do than categorize widgets, they need to come up with the best publishing experience and maximize business value. Aggregators are a handy dandy way to find things. Widgets are about independence, things that can be yanked from one place and brought to another, and an independent aggregator simply makes sense.

The Widget Widget Web

Ajit Jaokar at the Mobile Web 2.0 Blog:

The World Wide Web, as we know it, is exploding. From its fragments emerges a new "container-based" Web based on Widgets. For the lack of a better term, I shall call it a "Widget Widget Web."

I have long advocated the power of Widgets to transform the Web as we know it. Hence, I am starting a new set of blogs on the future potential and evolution of Widgets.

Modularization of software and applications is not new. The idea is simply "moving up the software stack."

And now, we in the Web 2.0 era, are talking of Widgets at a user interface/browser/business level.

The simultaneous of evolution of widgets, AJAX and other technologies is no accident since they are all feeding off each other to create a powerful new ecosystem.

Thus, the Widget Widget Web series of blogs are going to look at Widgets 2.0 (I hate sticking 2.0 after everything - but it does convey the point I am trying to make i.e. we are talking about how widgets will evolve)

Let me throw up a few ideas, both existing and forthcoming. Please feel encouraged to comment on these:

• a) Widgets are currently performing a single specific task
• b) Like RSS, they are sending out information from the parent site and enabling the recipients to use that information in their own sites (for example: the use of YouTube videos in MySpace)
• c) Widgets have widespread support from Operating system vendors and browser vendors
• d) Widgets have support from major web services/sites like MySpace and YouTube
• e) A cottage industry is emerging in the creation of Widgets and new Widget authoring tools are becoming mainstream
• f) Other applications like Salesforce.com are adopting widgets

What else? My favorites are:

1. Widgets on the Mobile Web which I have already talked about before
2. Widgets calling Widgets (hence leading to whole applications based on widgets - not just small functional applications)

I welcome any information about interesting work you are doing in this space (especially developments based on web technologies) and I shall include it in this series of blogs if possibleThus, I have only a broad vision about the evolution of widgets (probably a bit biased towards the mobile web) and user feedback will drive the Widget Widget Web series of blogs

Comng up widgets

Om Malik put his finger on the pulse for Business 2.0 with Suddenly everything's coming up widgets

Suddenly everything's coming up widgets Breaking down the Web into small, portable pieces is the smart trend that everyone from Nokia to Google is betting on.