Widget Addiction

Widgets. They're just too cute, I can't help myself. And not only are they adorable, but oh, so useful! I love the little guys!

And now there's a place for people like me... Well, actually, there are several. After a quick google search, I found a handful of sites out there serving up standalone embeddable widgets, and the best of these is definitely Widgetbox. Most other sites I found either didn't have anywhere close to the number of widgets available, or required the installation of some other software. It was actually a little harder than I thought it would be to find universal widgets. This is probably because embeddable widgets take a little more tech know-how to use than those provided through a service such as Yahoo.

Some of you may be asking... what's a widget? Well, to explain it in the easiest way I can think of, check out my sidebars. In a few sections, you might happen to come across a widget. These nifty little things can take almost any form, from a music player to a flash game, or services such as a stock ticker or showing a blog RSS feed. What's neat about them is that they can be placed anywhere, and even better, I don't have to write any code to get them to work! Widgets aren't actually housed on the site where they appear -- they are short snippets of code that simply point to their originating source and then stream the data to the site... And then... POOF! They appear. It's like magic. Kind of. And all I have to do is copy and paste! Widgets make me look like I don't suck at the internet. <3

Now I can choose what I want from an assortment of super sweet html or javascript nuggets, all of which can be placed on my site in any way I choose. I'm starting to think I might be getting out of control, though. I absolutely cannot stop putting these widgets all over my sidebars. Am I losing touch with reality?

My goal is to make you feel like Cadet Stimpy in Space Madness, when he's charged with guarding the history eraser button. Look at each of those little widgets... they are now, beckoning you ever closer...

Can you resist the temptation to push the beautiful shiny button? The jolly, candy-like button? What might happen? Maayyyybeeee something bad... Mayyyybeeee something good!

You won't TOUCH it, will you?