Talk To Me: What do you think about Widgets!

I'm researching widgets for a screencast and you can read my research in progress here.

Here's a widget that allows you to send a message over the Web for free!  Now, here's what I'd like you to do if you have a microphone installed on your machine:

1. Click on "Send Me A Message"
2. Speak slowly, clearly, and loudly
3. Tell me:

-Who you are
-Your blog, organization
-What do you think about widgets to build community around your blog?

If this experiment works out, I'd love to include it in the screencast.

About this widget

This widget comes to you via Odeo, a service that lets you record and share audio files—and it’s free.  Their widgets create embeddable Flash player or recorder.  I thought the message recorder might be most relevant to sparking conversation or building community on your blog.   

All your visitors need to do is click, record, and send.  The file gets sent to your odeo account where you can hear it.    What a great way to "listen" to your blog audience by having them talk to you!

Here's what it sounds like

 

powered by ODEO

I first came across " message" or " comment" programs on the sidebar at the FourEyed Monsters, a couple of younger filmmakers,  after they commented on one of my videos in YouTube.  (Obviously, this one looks like it required a bit of programming skills and it provides the option of using the phone versus pc microphone.)

I noticed the odeo recorder on the site of a UK colleague, Lloyd Davis, who writes the Perfect Path blog and I left a message on it after commenting on one of his posts.  I should ask him what he thinks about it?

Technical

This was a simple cut and paste!  Easy!

Considerations

Of course, visitors need to have a microphone installed in order play this game.  (That could be a show stopper if your audience consists of people who work with nonprofits.   I've noticed a lot of folks don't have mics, not even those cheap ones you can pick up at Best Buy.)

Also, another point that Dave from LifeKludger from Austraila mentioned to me in a skype call was that if you audience is primarily reading you via a reader -- that they need to "pop out of their reader" and use the browser to see your site.  Many regular readers may not do that, although if new readers and audience members find you via google or word of mouth, they may visit your blog through a browser.

Here you can listen to him say it:

Lloyd Davis from the Perfect Path Blog agrees:

powered by ODEO

Strategic Considerations

• Best to connect it with some content or as a way for people to give you some feedback
• If you are attracting new audience members to your site via browsers, than may be worth trying.
• Do the people you want to attract and engage  -- are they likely to have mics and feel comfortable using them.

Comments

[Joitske]

I've tried it, but I wonder where it shows up? In your inbox?

Forgot to follow your questions, oeps :)

[Nancy White]

Um, what's the definition of a widget?

[Beth]

A short wizard? A teenager girl who likes to surf ..

It is a small piece of code that can be cut and pasted into blog post or sidebar that brings in other content, links to a service, etc. Thanks for the reminder of context on the blog ... I'll put a link into wikipedia definition and Marshall's interview with Robin Goode.

[Torley]

Hiya Beth! I just tried this a few times, but alas, it kept stalling after I pressed "SEND". Looks like Odeo.com isn't fully up to speed today. :(

[Arin Crumley]

I have a reaction to the negative statements about the widgets. The ideal widget is an interface that also has an RSS feed. For example, the way we've set up our audio comment widget on our site is so that it will randomly select an audio comment file to play on our side bar. A future version might even give you a pull down to slect different audio comments and ideally we'll find a way to provide the HTML code for people to take that widget and put it on their myspace. But, ultimately the idea is the widget is A, either powered by an RSS feed, or B, produces an RSS feed. In the case of ours, we have an RSS feed produced through our wordpress site of all the "comments" we post that people have made about our project. So since some of the comments are audio, this is actually an RSS feed with enclosures which means you can pop it into iTunes and get all of the audio comments people post to us without ever having to come to the site. So I guess my point is first we've developed the RSS version, now we are trying to improve the widget version and I think that priority structure is a good one to combat the negative things said about widgets.

Check out the RSS feed of our audio/video and text comments, try loading it into iTunes to see how it works or looking at it in any other feed reader as well:

http://www.foureyedmonsters.com/category/comments/feed

[Sandra Dickinson]

I have put a gadget game ("Flood It") and a widget for Sudoku on my wikispace http:selearninggames.wikispaces.com.

I put them on for the purpose of getting adults back into playing games. For the purpose of engaging social entrepreneurs in my enterprise of 'making a game together' for nonprofit earned income venture profitability.

I know its only been a few days since I've been up and running. So far, I've got visitors playing the games - and one even posted a discussion comment on playing the game -- but the gadgets/widgets have NOT yet inspired visitors to engage in my enterprise of making a game together.

When I put the gadget/widget games on my wikispace -- I thought they were so totally cool. I myself played and played.

Beth, I love the way you now have an example of almost every widget imaginable up and running on your blog. Clearly -- the expectation is engagement by example. Nonprofits can figure out how to use Web2.0 tools for practical advantage. It is in our power - the tools are our tools to control, harness, manipulate, exploit - as soon as we see that they are OUR tools.