Posted on February 18, 2010 4:24 pm by Shel Holtz | Business | Technology | Widgets
I am seriously conflicted about how to feel about Sprout‘s decision to “sunset” its consumer widget-building software-as-a-service tool, Sprout Builder.
By “sunset,” of course, Sprout means “kill.” For a startup, they’ve certainly learned the corporate art of doubletalk.
I’ve been raving about Sprout Builder since its debut. Before Sprout Builder, dynamic, multimedia widgets were a costly undertaking requiring programming expertise. Sprout Builder made it drop-dead easy for anybody to create one and…
Posted on November 25, 2009 9:18 am by Shel Holtz | Death Watch | Web | Widgets
Twitter and Facebook’s rising popularity have altered the online habits of more than a few people. Given the volume of information that comes our way through the tweets and status updates of those we follow, many are now convinced that the news finds us.
Certainly I discover a lot of interesting news by way of shortened URLs embedded in tweets, and the…
Posted on April 21, 2008 7:56 am by Shel Holtz | Blogging | Social Media | Widgets
What a weekend.
It started quietly enough. I’ve been working with my client, Encyclopaedia Britannica, to prepare for the hard launch of its WebShare program, set for next Monday with the distribution of the official press release (to be accompanied, of course, by a social media version).
Tom Panelas, the director of Corporate Communications at Britannica, brought me in to help promote…
Posted on March 13, 2008 8:54 am by Shel Holtz | Widgets
If you need proof that widgets are popular with both publishers and viewers, take a look at Sprout, a Web app that lets you create sophisticated widgets with ease. (The widget that plays the latest episode of For Immediate Release, over on the right-hand side of this blog and wherever you, dear reader, choose to put it using the “share” code, took about…
Posted on February 2, 2008 3:14 pm by Shel Holtz | Audio | For Immediate Release | Podcasting | Widgets
I found a new service called Sprout that allows you to build a widget that plays multimedia, among a lot of other things. It’s remarkably easy to use, as I found out when I managed to get into the beta. It took about 10 minutes to build this widget, which plays the most current episode of FIR. As each episode is…
Posted on August 1, 2007 9:48 am by Shel Holtz | Widgets
There was little agreement when, at the New Communications Forum in February, I declared 2007 "the year of the widget" (although it was covered in a few places, like here and here). Bryan Person figured I might be on to something when he reported on the first conference dedicated to widgets, WidgetCon, held last month in New York.
But surfing through…
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