I was recently contacted by a fellow Google gadget developer and he mentioned his new venture called Snapabug.com and asked me to take a look.

I did, and I am pretty impressed.

It is a widget solution that streamlines a website/company support process.
Imagine someone is having a problem with your website and contacts your support team. Much of the required information necessary to resolve the problem is technical in nature.
What browser are you using? What version of Flash? What are you seeing?
Many normal web users simply won’t know this info and to resolve the issue is a whole bunch of back and forth communication.

Snapabug actually takes a screen shot of the users computer and reports the technical details of their computer automatically and integrates this info with your existing support system.

Visitors only need to enter their email address, a quick description of their problem and click “send”.

SnapABug collects all the information you need: email, description, operating system, browser, language, location, etc. Plus it takes a snapshot of the users screen.

Your support team and your customer can chat through this widget solution as well. A very impressive solution and great idea.

Explained in video below:

I can see many situations where this solution would be very useful. It looks very easy to implement as well.

Have you ever seen a grouping of Google gadgets available as tabs? It looks like the image to the right (click image to see what I am talking about).

This is the way iGoogle tabs are distributed. A page like this is shown to the user who can then decide which of the gadgets will be in the tab.

If a user presses the blue “Add to iGoogle” button, then they are taken to their iGoogle home page and there will now be a new tab of gadgets there…

By using tabs, you can spread more than one gadget at a time. The above example puts a virtual pets tab with six gadgets on a users iGoogle page with one click. This post will tell you how to do this, but first let’s see why we should use an iGoogle tab at all…

Reasons to use iGoogle tabs

• Ranking – If enough people are using your gadgets under a certain tab, there are ranking benefits. If your virtual pet gadget is included in a tab titled “virtual pets” then that is a great indication that your gadget is useful and has something to do with “virtual pets”.
• Distribution – Let’s say you have popular gadgets already in the gadget directory, but also have some new ones as well. You can mix and match your gadgets to help distribute the new ones off the popularity of your old gadgets. For this example I am doing exactly that. There are six gadgets in this virtual pets iGoogle tab. Three of them are very popular (the monkey, panda and the puppy), and three are new (the lion cub, fox, and turtle).
• Promotion – If you have a service you are promoting you can make a couple of themed gadgets around your subject, put them in a tab, and presto, you have something to promote.

How to create an iGoogle tab

To create a tab go to any of your existing tabs on your iGoogle homepage (most people only have the two default tabs – “home” and “chat”). Click the down arrow next to the tab name as shown in image.

Once you click that you will see an option to “add a tab”. Click that and a window will pop up that looks like this…

It will ask you to name the tab you are about to make. Do so wisely. Name your tab for what you would like your gadgets to rank for. If your gadgets are about cars, name it “cars”. Our example one is about virtual pets, so I named it “virtual pets”.

Keep the box checked that says “I am feeling lucky. Automatically add stuff based on the tab name.” This will fill your new tab with gadgets that already rank well for the word or phrase you are naming your tab. Seeing what gadgets Google will fill the tab with lets you know a couple of important things.

1. Who your competitors are – The gadgets that show up are doing well, learn from them and use this information to make better and more useful gadgets for your term.

2. If there are competitors – If Google doesn’t find gadgets for your tab then you have found a niche worth trying.

Okay so now we have an iGoogle tab, what next? I would suggest filling it with your own gadgets! Once you have added your gadgets (and perhaps removed your competitors) look at the tab and see if it offers a useful set of gadgets that are a good fit for the term you used to name the tab. Don’t be afraid to include other peoples gadgets as well. A good goal would be to offer a complete, and helpful set of gadgets. If you named your tab “cars” then make sure there are a good group of gadgets that covers what a user would want about cars (car news, car photos, car videos, etc.).

How to distribute an iGoogle tab

How do you let people know about your tab? The first step is finding out what the share link is so that you can link to the “add tab” page.
To do this go back to that little down arrow next to your new tab…

Click it and choose the “share this tab” option.When you do you will see a window like this…

Do not send this to any friends yet, just send the tab to yourself. Enter your email, and hit send (btw if you have a theme, or user preferences that you want the gadgets in the tab to retain check the “save my settings” box).

You will receive an email that links to the page where users can find your tab as in the image to the right. This page lets an user add the several gadgets within your tab with one click. Very nice.

Now that you are armed with the URL of the tab, go visit and make sure everything looks right and that it is working and displaying well. Make sure you have thumbnail images for all the gadgets in your tab so that the “add tab” page looks pleasing and nice (learn about thumbnail images in my moduleprefs tutorial).

Okay we now have an iGoogle tab full of gadgets, and a URL to share it, let’s promote this baby.

How to promote an iGoogle tab

• First thing I want to say about this is that these “add tab” pages actually can rank rather well so do not be afraid to link to this page lavishly. But how do we get people to go to this “add tab” page.
• If you have a website, feature your iGoogle tab somewhere.
• Using our example, I have a virtual pet Google gadgets page and what I did with this new tab was to make it into sorta an ad. It is in the side bar of that page.
• However and where ever you feature it or link to it from your website, make sure that it is somewhat prominent. You want people to go… “What’s an iGoogle tab?, let’s see….. [click]“
• If you have made a useful set of gadgets then your tab can be shared like any other link. I had a Stephen Colbert tab and it hit the front page of Digg.
• If you do submit to a social sharing / voting site then make sure that you enter the “add tab” page as the URL. Do not link to your own site where you are explaining about it. The reason for this is that Google is a trusted domain. If you are simply linking to a Google “add tab” page, then people who lke the subject will actually feel okay voting up, whereas a blog post about how gosh darn nifty your tab is will appear spammy.
• Link to it from within your gadgets. Add a small text link in your gadgets that takes users your “add tab” page.
• Get a little help from your friends. Tell them about it and have them install it.

You basically can use any technique to promote this as you do any other webpage. What makes iGoogle tabs so neat is that they simplify the process a user must go through in order to use your gadgets.

Instead of having six different campaigns for six different gadgets, why not concentrate on just one for all of your gadgets? In many situations this is wise, and associates your gadgets with their search terms.

This post will describe the best practices of how to promote a Google gadget, but most of the things I mention are equally useful for any kind of widget promotion.

Google Gadget Promotion 101

Let’s get right to a couple of obvious things first so that we don’t waste any time…

Usefulness:

If your Google gadget is not useful to anyone, it will not do well no matter how well you promote it. It is better to begin again with a new useful gadget than to promote one that is not useful to anyone. What makes a Google gadget useful? It must somehow pleasure someone. It must make them laugh, make their day easier, provide information that is not available elsewhere, entertain them, or be fun to interact with. Ask anyone other than you to try it and tell you what they think. A useful gadget is amazingly easy to promote. The first step in Google gadget promotion is to determine honestly if your gadget is worth promoting.

Is it useful?

If yes start promoting.

If not, start over, make a new gadget. Promoting your gadget won’t help.

Know your audience:

The audience of a Google gadget is in large part iGoogle users. iGoogle is a personalized homepage. This means that only the owner of that page can see your gadget. I want to say that again. Only the owner of the iGoogle page can see that iGoogle page. It is not a public profile that others can see. Think about that when designing and creating your gadget. A great example of this would be the use of viral installers (those little buttons under gadgets that say “get this widget”).

If there is only one person at a time seeing your gadget, then there is no reason to have a “get this widget” button because they already have it.

These buttons or viral installers are not appropriate for Google gadgets the vast majority of time. It is not useful and it takes up space. Space is what you have the least of in your widget so use it wisely to be useful and pleasant to the users of the widget.

Does your Google gadget have a viral installer?

If yes, get rid of it and make a iGoogle gadget specific version of your widget that does not include the “get this widget” button.

If no, continue.

Simplicity:

The Google gadgets that are the most popular are also the Google gadgets that are the most simple. Bells and whistles are not often appropriate for a Google gadget. They can have bells and whistles by visiting your site if they want. Gadget users want the basic  functionality of your website on their homepage, they do not want your website on their homepage. A simple search box is virtually always more universally used than a fancier type of gadget. There are millions of users of the Wikipedia search gadget. This gadget is just a searchbox that redirects to Wikipedia… Notice the lack of any dancing elves or branding overkill? You should also notice that it is small and simple. The overall reason this widget is used by millions is that is provides a simple and useful interface to information that is used by alot of people. It doesn’t need flashy design elements. It does it’s job. It is useful.

Okay, let’s get to the promotion guide…

Google Gadget Promotion

The most important part of gadget promotion is usefulness and functionality, but what is the next important thing?

Representation in the Google gadget directory:

The way that most users find gadgets is the Google gadget directory. The single largest mistake that I have seen people make is to not submit their gadget to the directory. If you are not in the Google gadget directory, users will not find you there. To be more clear, if you are not in the Google gadget directory then your gadget is not represented in the single most used place that users find gadgets. There is a hundred million or so users using the Google gadget directory. I can name dozens of Fortune 1000 companies who do not understand this. If somebody goes to the Google gadget directory and searches for your exact brand name they will not find you unless you have submitted your gadget to the directory. The reason so many people (and particularly large brands) are not represented in the Google gadget directory is because they trust their widget spread to media companies who use viral installers.

It is important to know that just because a user has the capacity to install your gadget on iGoogle does not mean that your gadget is represented in the Google gadget directory.

Search for your gadget or your brand name in the Google gadget directory

If it is there continue.

If it is not there, submit it to the directory

Presentation:

How your gadget or widget is presented to people is the number one factor in if they will even try it out. Let’s look in detail at what presentation options we have on the Google gadget platform.

Description: What you say about your gadget in your description is very important and should be concise and describe the gadget and it’s usefulness quickly and simply. But people won’t even read or bother to see your description unless they like the…

Thumbnail: Each Google gadget has a thumbnail. This is a small image that represents your gadget. This is one of the most important pieces of promotion you have. It has to get a point across and it has to stand out from the other thumbnails users are presented with. The first step to having an effective thumbnail is to actually have a thumbnail. Tens of thousands of gadget do not even have a thumbnail image! When a gadget does not have a thumbnail then Google displays a default thumbnail (image on left). If your gadget is based on a feed then it also shows a default image (shown on right). If there is no distinction between you and other gadgets, there is a less likelihood that a user will even click to your gadget description page. To illustrate this point, let’s search for “SEO” in the Google gadget directory… Of the first 5 results, only one has a thumbnail. See how the others just sort of blend together and seem sorta “blah”? When someone searches for anything in the Google gadget directory the only visual indication they will get of your gadget is the thumbnail.

They have to click again before they see the other visual indication of your gadget (the screen shot which will will speak of in a moment). This means that the first visual indication of your gadget a user receives is the thumbnail image. The thumbnail is important.

To have a thumbnail in your gadget requires only one line of code… thumbnail=”urlofyourimage”

The specs of what a thumbnail should be are provided by Google as…

Thumbnails are used in the content directory to give users a preview of a gadget. They should capture the main functionality of your gadget without showing it in its entirety. The value for this attribute is a string that gives the URL for a gadget thumbnail. This must be a well-formed URL, not a relative URL. This image must be on a public web site that is not blocked by robots.txt. PNG is the preferred format, though GIF and JPG are also acceptable. Thumbnails should be 120×60 pixels. They should not include title bars.

Does your gadget have a thumbnail?

If yes continue

If no, add a thumbnail. The directions of how to do so are provided by Google here.If that page seems confusing, you may want to start with my Google gadget tutorial.

Screen Shot: The screen shot of a Google gadget is displayed to a potential user when they are asked if they want to install a gadget and it is also displayed in the Google gadget directory description page for that gadget. The screenshot should show visually what the gadget will look like on the users homepage. Here is what Google says about the screenshot in their documentation….

This is a string that gives the URL for a gadget screenshot. This must be a well-formed URL, not a relative URL. This image must be on a public web site that is not blocked by robots.txt. PNG is the preferred format, though GIF and JPG are also acceptable. Gadget screenshots should be 280 pixels wide. The height of the screenshot should be the “natural” height of the gadget when it’s in use. This helps users understand how much space a gadget will consume on their screen before they add it to their page. The screenshot should not have any whitespace above the gadget’s blue header bar. Screenshots should show your full gadget, including its title bar, but nothing else. Alternatively, you can screenshot the gadget with the edit window open. Screenshots should not be resized or cropped. For quality and consistency, Google may take its own screenshots of a given gadget.

Let’s take a look at a screenshot on a Google gadget description page…

This is a Google gadget from Google itself. The image is the screenshot image. It shows a potential user what the gadget will look like on their homepage. It is always worth looking at official Google gadgets to see what they are doing. They are well aware of what works and what does not. Often by just looking at how a gadget built by Google is listed can tell you alot.

Does your gadget have a screenshot?

If yes, continue

If no, add a screenshot that follow the guidelines I quoted above.

Other directories that list Google gadgets:

Your gadget should be in as many directories as possible. Here is a list of places to submit your Google gadget.

Display your gadget on your website

The best way to introduce your gadget to the world is through your own website, or through already existing interactions between yourself and your customers or users. There are different ways to accomplish this.

One way is to simply have a page dedicated to different ways that a user can interact with your website.
A great example of this is the website Sphinn, where they have a specific page that highlights different ways users can interact with their site. It is important not only to have page like this, but to make that page prominent. Sphinn accomplishes this by listing this page in their top navigation.

This is smart for a couple of reasons, one so that people can find it, and two, because gadgets, like webpages are listed in relevance in the Google gadget directory. The same algorithm that also ranks gadgets (I will speak more on this later).

Another way is to use existing  interactions between your website and your users to promote your gadget.

An example of this would be a commerce website that takes payments. If you take payments, then you also give receipts. Consider mentioning your gadget on your receipts or “thank you for your purchase” page. Even better, give them a reason to use it. Consider saying something like “save 20 percent on items bought through our Google gadget”.

Yet another way to use your website is to actually display information through a Google gadget. Look at your sidebar, what are you showing?  Using Sphinn.com as an example again, they are displaying the “Top 10 most Sphunn in What’s New” which is an ever changing list of what stories have been voted on the most that are not yet promoted to the front page. That information could be shown in a gadget that people can grab.

The popular news site Digg is a great example of how to do this. They have the very same type of scenario. The have information to show their users in a sidebar. They are showing that information inside a widget.

This tactic is very successful.

Is your gadget mentioned on your website?

If yes continue

If no, put it on your website.

The best place to get information about Google is Google itself, here is what they have to say about promoting your gadget.

Here is another Google page about what users like to see in their gadgets.

1.) Widgetbox

Widgetbox has offered for over a year something called “blidgets”. These are widgets that take a feed and, well, turn them into a widget. It takes only a couple of minutes to do it. In fact, you don’t even need to tell it your feed address, just your blog address.

You just go to their feed widget page (shown above) and enter the url of your blog. After you hit the continue button, you will be presented with your new widget (pretty tough huh?) and you will be able to customize it.

Customize it then save it (you will have to make an account, which is simple and painless). Widgetbox has an extremely strong domain SEO value. Your description page for your blidget on Widgetbox will likely rank in the top 10 or 20 for whatever your blog name is within a couple of days.

2) Google Gadget

To make your feed into a Google gadget is also simple and easy to do. I once explained this over at SEOmoz but this time I will add a couple of details and suggestions. The steps are…

1) Go to the Google gadget directory

On the bottom of the left hand navigation there is a link that says “Add feed or gadget” Click that.

2) Enter your feed URL and click “Add”

It will think a second and then tell you it is

done. Go back to your iGoogle home and you will see a gadget displaying your latest posts…

You are done!

When you are looking at your feed gadget on your iGoogle home page, click the little down arrow on the upper right hand corner of the gadget and choose “about this gadget” you will be taken to a page that describes your new gadget.

You can also add just a button using Google’s button creator.

If you have dealt with some programming before, I highly suggest taking a look at another Google product that is just fabulous… the Google AJAX Feed API

3) Sprout

Sprout is an interface that allows you to create flash widgets without knowing flash. It is a very impressive tool that is used by some big players. For the purpose of this tutorial I am just going to describe how to make a feed, but you can add videos, pictures, twitter, just about anything really.

Let’s make a widget out of the SEOish feed…

Go to the Sprout Get Started page and click the enormous button that says “Start building now”. If you are in IE it may take awhile to load. Whe it does it will present you with some choices. Choose “Blank Slate”…

Once you click that you will asked to enter a title and description of your project. I put as a title “SEOish” and as a description “A fabulously wonderful resource on widgets and SEO”.

Next you will come to the canvas. The white square in the middle of the page is your widget canvas…

In the upper left hand corner, click “general”. Once you do that the menu will expand and now you have to choose “News Feed”…

When you choose news feed it will then think a minute and then present you with a square in your canvas you can adjust this square to cover the whole canvas.

Next we must tell the widget builder what feed to put in there. Over on the right hand side of the page you will see bunches of choices, but let’s look at the one that says “Feed URL”.

This is where you enter your feed url and once you do you will see your latest posts show up in the widget.

In the upper right hand corner look for the “preview” button. Click it and it will show you a preview of your widget…

Now you can do whatever you want, add pictures, format it or just leave it as it is.

When you like how it looks just click “save” it is in the upper right hand corner near “preview”.

To see it and get the code you will have to hit “publish”. You will be asked to make an account (again, simple and easy). Congrats! you now have a flash widget.

4) Dapper.net

Dapper.net is a very strong a robust tool. You get alot of choices of how to display your feed as a widget (flash, Google gadget, Netvibes gadget, etc.).

To get started on dapper go to the create Dapp page.

Choose the tab that says “In an existing RSS Feed”…

Enter your feed url. After you enter your url look at the choices you have (in the pic to right the choices are to the left of the RSS button).

Choose if you want a Google gadget, Netvibes Module, or just an RSS feed. If you choose the Google gadget or the Netvibes module, that is what you will get. Pretty simple.

If you choose RSS feed however, you get some more interesting choices…

Let’s choose the RSS feed option for SEOish.com. I entered http://www.seoish.com and then I choose RSS feed, then I hit the “Next step” button. Here is what the next page looks like…

This page is a preview of what is possible to display from your feed. If you have titles, descriptions, and dates then you are doing good. You can make some changes on this page like remove the publication date (by unchecking it in the upper right hand corner) but for the purposes of what we are doing right now let’s just go to the next step. The next page will give you a host of choices of how to display your content. Play around with them all. You will have to make an account to do this (simple, free, easy).

One underutilized method of gadget spread is Internationalization.

Google gadgets that are only listed in the English language are missing tens of millions of potential users.

The Google gadget directory, when seen in Italy, prefers to show Italian language descriptions and titles. They are more useful to Italian users. Also consider that when an Italian user is searching for a “cat” gadget they are actually typing the word “gatto”. They are looking for things in their own language. This is naturally true of all languages.

Consider this – There are currently no “gatto” (cat) gadgets in the entire Google gadget directory. If you do actually have a cat gadget, I highly suggest you internationalize it to get those Italians

Many gadgets are not language specific, for example a gadget displaying cute, adorable cat photos need not be limited to English or any other language. Clocks are another example of a non-language specific gadget.

If you have a Google gadget and want it to display in different languages when it is displayed in different countries, here is how you do so…

The best place to get information about Google is from Google itself. The process I am describing is documented at Google under their Gadgets and Internationalization Spec (i18n). This walkthru of the process is just a simplification of that spec.

Click the image below to see up close what the same gadget looks like when described in different languages.

There are basically three steps to gadget internationalization…

1. Decide which countries and languages you wish to cover and then acquire the translation of your gadget description and title.

2. Make small text files called “message bundles”

3. Edit your gadget code to include the language support.

Ready? Let’s go international.

First you need the translations. For most gadgets you need only translate two things, the title and the description, but you also can translate user preferences as well.

Translating your Google gadget title and description

Copy and paste your gadget description. Using the Panda gadget as an example the English description is…

“Adorable Panda bear for your homepage. Interact and feed your panda some bamboo.”

Go to Google’s translation tool and paste your description into the text field…

Choose the language you description is in and then choose the language you want it translated into, in this case I am translated my English description into Korean. Click the translate button….

Now copy and paste your translation and save into a text file. Repeat this process for your gadget title.

Congrats! You now have a Korean description and title of your gadget. Now let’s set up our gadget to display the Korean description when someone in Korea is looking at it…

Message Bundles

A message bundle is a small simple xml file that contains callable information. For example, when Google detects that someone in Korea is looking at your gadget it will look for a Korean “message bundle” if you have instructed it to do so in the gadget code (we will discuss that part in a minute). This message bundle is just a small text file which the gadget calls to display the Korean text. The below image shows the code…

The above file is called for the Panda gadget when it is being displayed in Korea. The above shown code is the entire message bundle. It may look a bit scary in Korean, but if you look closer you are only defining three things…

Title, description, and Directory_title (which is for almost all purposes the same thing as the title).

To make your own message bundle follow this link to go to the above code. Important! When you go to that file make sure to left click and choose “view source”. Copy and paste the code into a text editor and save it as “ko_ALL.xml” (I will explain why is a second). Take the title and description translation you created in the first step and paste them in the appropriate parts of the code.

Paste the title you translated and paste inbetween the <msg name=”title”> and the </msg> tags. Also place the title translation in the “directory_title” part too. <msg name=”Directory_title”></msg> Now do the same for your description.

For each language you need a separate message bundle file. These files must be hosted somewhere, they will be called from your Google gadget code, as described below.

Altering Google gadget code for internationalization

In order to take advantage of Google’s impressive geo location abilities, we must first add some code to our gadget.

In order to display the information contained in the message bundles (the translations) you must first call for them. Google will figure out where the user is coming from, but you must tell Google what to do with that information.

The way to do this is by changing some information in the ModulePrefs of your existing gadget. If you do not know what moduleprefs are you may want to see my Google gadget tutorial.

ModulePrefs (Module Preferences) is the first part of a Google gadget code and it’s function is to tell Google certain things that are specific to that gadget. Things like the title, the author, etc. If you already have a Google gadget, you already have a ModulePref section.

In the image below I have circled the parts of the ModulePref that I have altered in the Panda gadget to make it international…

Notice that the title and the descriptions are now calling a variable instead of just using text.

title=”__MSG_title__”

description=”__MSG_description__”

I also changed the directory title pref…

directory_title=”__MSG_Directory_title__”

By changing these values I have now made them variable which means that Google can decide what to put in those fields depending on what language Google detects is being used.

Now the big chunk of code I have entered is the Locale part. Let’s look closer at what it is doing in there…

The first line tells Google where to find your default message bundle. The default one is named “ALL_ALL.xml.

The info in the ALL_ALL.xml message bundle is the default info that should be displayed in case thing go kooky or something does not work, so this is an important one. This should be a message bundle in the default language of the gadget. In the case of our Panda example it is in English. See the ALL_ALL.xml file for the panda gadget here.

Each message bundle is exactly the same code, just different content for different languages. Each message bundle is named something different depending on what language is contained within it. For each language you choose to cover with your gadget, you must tell Google. this is what the remaining code in the image above is doing. For example let’s look at the Korean message bundle we made above and how it is listed in the gadget code:

<Locale lang=”ko” messages=”http://www.gadzi.com/gadgets/panda/ko_ALL.xml>

This line says to Google “If someone using Korean is looking at this gadget – use the information contained in the message bundle ko_ALL.xml”

Each of the lines you see in the code image above are just repeats of this same message for different languages.

So to change the gadget code we had to make the title, description, and the directory_title variables.

We then had to add a line telling Google where to find the default information for those variables.

We then had to provide a line of code telling Google which message bundle to use for each language we want to cover.

To learn more go to Google’s documentation: Gadgets and Internationalization Spec (i18n)

To see the panda gadget example code go to: Panda Gadget Example code

To see how the Google gadget directory displays languages go to: Google Gadget International Usage

I will be speaking at PubCon about widgets on the Wonderful World Of Widgets session.

This will be my first officially “We Build Pages” speaking gig! For those of you who remember my adventures of last years PubCon you probably know that I do not like to be awake during the day, so if I have to be awake I might as well have some extraordinary things to say, which I will.

It will be a session worth watching for anyone who is considering getting into gadgets.

Before I joined Jim Boykin and We Build Pages I told Jim that I had to attend PubCon every year. PubCon is my “my time”.

I might even unveil some secrets about the ongoing team building here at We Build Pages

I will also be at SMX East. Forward thinking marketers should attend the Enhanced Listings panel. Danny and Vannesa are showing their already all too clear smarts by having this session.

If you do not know about enhanced listings, you should. Enhanced listings are what I am probably most excited about in the search engine community, they are also the things I spend most of my thoughts on, and there are many exciting things going on. To get a flavor of them see my articles on…

Yahoo Search monkey:

Yahoo beats Google to Widgets in search results Yahoo Search Monkey Launch Party Search Monkey SEOmoz example

Google Subscribed Gadgets:

Google Gadgets in Search Results Google and Human Behavior

Microsoft WebSlices: (I know this isn’t a enhancement per se, but it could be…)

Microsoft introduces Web Slices

I am working very hard to make We Build Pages the first major SEM firm to offer enhanced listings to their clients. We will be offinging alot more than link building very soon. Keep an eye on Jim’s blog to stay updated on this.

If you read this blog and you are a developer, you probably should let me know I often have work on neat projects.

I have project work for…

Open Social developers (javascript)

Search Monkey (php / xslt)

Facebook (php)

Be part of some of the most popular and innovative applications on the web.

I should also note that We Build Pages is currently seeking a full time, inhouse Perl developer for Troy, NY.

To find out more leave a comment or email me at gadgets [at] gadzi.com

Note to Google:

Tool bar Google gadgets are not functioning in the newest beta release of Internet Explorer 8 (Beta 2).

This includes parts of the Google toolbar navigation that depend on gadget functionality. For example the “button gallery” button.

When using a button that calls a gadget it just displays “Loading”.

Google was offering 100,000 and 275,000 dollars to the developers of applications for Android (Googles mobile phone platform).

The winners were announced today. I am a bit disappointed that there are no charities or non-profits represented, but there are some clever, functional, and useful apps. Functionality appears to be the biggest factor in who won. If you are building apps or thinking of doing so, this is a great way to see the type of applications and gadgets Google likes for their platforms.

Congrats to all the winners!

Facebook has announced it’s new funding arm of fbFund.

Through this fund Facebook will distribute 10 million dollars to developers of useful apps. There are a couple different ways these funds will go out but I will describe the 2 Million they are giving out in a competition.

A quick run down of how this will work is this:

Nearly $2 million in non-recourse grants will be distributed between two rounds of the competition: