Archive for the ‘widget’ tag
“Powered by Category Cloud”
I’ve just installed Operator - a Firefox extension that highlights microformatted data on web pages.
So far I haven’t noticed any performance issues, and it’s been playing nicely with all my other Firefox extensions.
As a web developer, Operator makes me want to add more semantic mark-up to my websites, (which I already try to do). This extension will make it easier for testing purposes.
I decided to read more about the extension on the developer’s blog - to which I was pleasantly surprised to find that it uses my Category Cloud widget (plug-in for WordPress). Along with a kudos-link back to my personal website. (Thanks Mike!) 
A while ago I was curious to how many people were using my Category Cloud widget plug-in, so I added an opt-out “powered by” link. This way I could check my referrals or Google results count for “Powered by Category Cloud”.
I’ve been amazed by the outcome of this. I honestly thought that everyone would opt-out of the link, yet they didn’t! So now my PageRank has increased; I’m in the Technorati Top 10K (which I definitely don’t deserve!); and I get a steady flow of traffic (low, but consistent).
I’ve tried to support the Category Cloud widget as best I can… so maybe it’s good karma?
Scrobbling my BBC Radio listening on Last.fm
A couple of months ago I’d heard that the BBC Radio Labs had developed a desktop widget that scrobbled the songs you listen to on BBC Radio (currently only available for Radio 1, Radio 2, 6 Music and 1 Xtra) [via Last.fm]
I’m not a big fan of gimmicky desktop widgets - it’s bad enough that Vista comes with them as default - some people love them, some hate them… I just prefer less clutter on my desktop!
The other day I was listening to a lot of Radio 1… to which I thought it would be nice to have these songs scrobbled on my Last.fm profile. So I bit the bullet and downloaded Yahoo! Widgets and the BBC Radio + Last.fm widget. (OS X widget is also available)
So far I’ve been fairly impressed with the way it works. That is, once I’d hidden all the gimmicky widgets - yes I already have a clock in my taskbar; the weather outside is cold and wet… I know this already, this is England after all!
