Tuesday, July 10, 2007 at 1:13PM The Big Widget Challenge sponsored by Widgetbox and Freewebs closed Sunday night.
We had a ton of excellent submissions! The winner -- with a really fantastic Flash-based mash-up widget -- has been privately notified. A public announcement will be made at WidgetCon in New York City tomorrow, July 11.
Thanks everybody for your inspired widgets. We will be making them all live in the gallery tomorrow.
Friday, July 6, 2007 at 2:27PM Forbes.com just released a slew of super cool widgets, and we aren't just saying that because we built 'em!
In all seriousness, we are extremely excited and honored to announce that we have partnered with Forbes.com to help them with their brand new widget strategy, allowing Forbes.com to provide their content to anyone who wants it, anywhere they want it.
We have created a Showcase for Forbes.com widgets, and we'll also be regularly featuring Forbes.com widgets on our front door (there's a handy "Stock to Watch" widget there right now), so be sure to check Widgetbox often for all the latest news! In addition, Forbes.com has set up its own widget page, Forbes.com/widgets, where you can grab a widget for your blog, social networking site, or personal page.
One of the really nifty features of these widgets is that they are ad supported. Visa has sponsored Forbes' widget strategy, which is a clear demonstration of the power of widgets and their rapid acceptance into the online marketing and advertising world. What Widgetbox has done to make this possible is fully integrate with the Forbes.com ad server, so the ads are automatically fed into the widgets, and Forbes has complete control over the content. Even cooler (if we do say so ourselves) is that we have developed a handy "ad-friendly detection system" so that the ads will only show up in sites that are receptive to them For example, these ads will never show up on MySpace, but users can still post a Forbes.com widget there. How cool is that?? It's pretty much Widgetbox magic.
This is, we believe, the beginning of a new form of advertising, which we are calling "In-Widget Advertising." Up until now, there have certainly been widgets that contain branded content, and there are plenty of widgets that facilitate e-commerce transactions where the developer/user of the widget can participate in affiliate programs. These are fantastic revenue generating opportunities, and we fully support them, but we believe the power of in-widget advertising has the potential to take the conversation to an entirely different level. We are 100% excited to be rolling this out.
Forbes.com is the first of the business press to really embrace widgets, and we are just thrilled to work with them. We can't wait to see where the partnership goes in the future! Big thanks to the entire Forbes.com team who has been working hard on this for months, and thanks also to the awesome crew over here at Widgetbox - we've really got an amazing group of seemingly tireless folks.
Check out the new Forbes.com widgets, and let us know what you think!
Tuesday, July 3, 2007 at 4:35PM Thanks to all the developers who have submitted their awesome widgets to the BIG Widget Challenge! The esteemed judging panel from Widgetbox and Freewebs definitely has their judging work cut out for them...
Just wanted to remind all of you that the deadline for submissions is THIS THURSDAY JULY 5th. You've got two days left to check out the rules again, and submit your widget for a chance at the $1000 Grand Prize!!! We'll announce the winner on stage next week at the sold-out WidgetCon Conference.
Friday, June 15, 2007 at 4:49PM You, yes, YOU could be the winner of a cool $1000 in cash by taking The BIG Widget Challenge!
What is The BIG Widget Challenge, you ask? Well, it's a contest we schemed up with our partners at Freewebs, and the developer of the best widget takes home the cash. The winner will be announced live and on stage on July 11th at the Freewebs WidgetCon conference. Pretty good deal, eh? So, now that you are all chomping at the bit, here are some tidbits to get your wheels turning.
We're asking for widgets that fall into one or more of these three categories:
And your widgets will be judged on:
For the rest of the nitty gritty check out all the rules and info on our contest site. The submission deadline is noon PDT on Thursday, July 5th.
What are you waiting for? Start your widget development engines and submit your widget today!
Tuesday, June 12, 2007 at 1:52PM 
Although based in San Francisco, CA Widgetbox's preferred home team is the Oakland A's. Wednesday night, a few of us went to cheer them on as they faced the dispicable Boston Red Sox (Boooo!). Ike was in town visiting us from (ironically) the Boston office. The A's defense turned 3 double plays and Cust and Crosby combined to drive in 3 runs. That was all they needed as the A's held on to win it 3-2. It was a fun night at the ballpark, we had plenty of beers, hot dogs, and other classic baseball games treats. Christopher, Ike, and I polished off a total of 13 hot dogs! Christopher won the baseball cap monty as well as the red-white-blue race contest and I won the attendance quiz. The A's ended up winning the 4-game series with Boston 3-1... Go A's!!!
Check out the pictures we took from the game in our Photo Album.