Widgets: Add rich content without being a coder

For news reporters and bloggers whose focus is on content, HTML and RSS and Javascript can be scary words. "Widgets" are a great way for content creators and publishers to enrich their own stories and blogs with content from other sources, without needing to be an expert in code-writing.

My favorite tool for this is the web site widgetbox.com, where easy tutorials guide the user in how to create a widget and generate the necessary code that can then be simply pasted into a web site or story for easy embedding. On Widgetbox, you can either search for a widget application you'd like (say, a countdown clock), or create a widget.

Here in Portland, the big news is the return of #1 Trail Blazers draft pick Greg Oden from season ending injury, so I found a widget that enables me to embed Greg Oden's blog onto my web site. I clicked on the widget, clicked on "Blogger" as my publishing platform and the widget placed it in the right column of my blog. Take a peek in the right-hand column to check it out.

Alternatively, you can simply go to a web site that has content you're interested in and see if they already offer it in widget form.

Want to embed automatically updated gas price information onto your web site? GasBuddy.com has a localizable gas prices widget. You can see an example here, on the web site I manage, the "Portland Gas Prices" page of kgw.com.

How about the Presidential election? Downloadable widgets are available from both CNN and MSNBC that enable local media and bloggers to pull the content & resources of these large national networks into localized web pages. I've added the CNN widget here, and the NBC widget in a separate blog post above this one.

A poster to the New Media Blog, JMK, recommends another great web site for getting and building wigdgets: http://www.go2web20.net/

The journalistic power of utilizing widgets is two-fold: non-programmers can now add complex multimedia content to their story pages without needing to know or even understand the underlying coding (it's all done by the widget); and, local news outlets and even bloggers can take advantage of the resources and expertise of larger or distance content creators to enrich and add substance to their local coverage. So, go forth and embed!