We are super excited to announce that today we are launching a new homepage that users will see when they log in to widgetbox.com!  We’ve listened to your feedback and we hope this page will help make finding and creating widgets an even simpler and more fun experience.

The new page gives you a quick snapshot of your recently installed and developed widgets, as well as a new widget playground that shows you two of your recently edited widgets.  And not to worry, you can still browse the gallery by clicking the “Gallery” tab, or see your full list of developed widgets by clicking the “Developed Widgets” link in the top navigation.

If you want to check it out, go to http://www.widgetbox.com/home/. We hope you like it, and look forward to adding more great new features  in the weeks to come!

Are you struggling to keep up with all ofthe new tools and improvements available from Widgetbox?

Here are three great ways to stay current with Widgetbox and make sure your widgets are leveraging our newest, most powerful features. All three options will update with each new Widgetbox announcement. So pick one (or all three!) and be sure not to miss the next exciting announcement:

1. The New on Widgetbox Widget

2. The New on Widgetbox RSS Feed

Subscribe via RSS

3. Subscribe by Email!

You can now stay connected with Widgetbox via Twitter (@Widgetbox). You can follow us to stay abreast of the latest Widgetbox news and announcements.

We also turned Widgetbox’s Twitter Feed into a widget (of course!). You can grab the wide version (300×300) or a sidebar version (170×300):

You can also grab the new Widgetbox Blog Widget – another great way to stay current with Widgetbox news and updates:

For “Cage Match: Battle of the Widget Business Model” we’re getting a great line-up together for a honest, much needed and no holds barred discussion about the various possible monetization schemes for widgets and how, why, and even whether they work. We are the first to say there has been a lot of hype about widgets over the last couple of years, and now it is time for the various companies in the space to get serious and have viable businesses! So far, on this panel, we’ve got representatives from Widgetbox (yeah, you knew that already), Gigya, iWidgets, and Sprout. We think this panel is going to rock. Vote for it here!

For “Widget Warriors: Dominating the Web by Building It” we’re getting an awesome line-up here as well. We already told you about Matt Basta – widget maker and videographer extraordinairre. We’ve just added none other than Wayne Lee, the founder and creator of Bunnyhero Labs. Yup, if you like those awesome cyber-pets, and you can’t stop feeding the animals their favorite goodies and making them jump all over the widgets, then vote for this panel! This is going to be a great talk from independent, in-the-trenches widget makers – their tips, tricks, and paths to success.

We’re pretty fired up about both of these panels, but we need your help to make them happen. Please vote today!

PS – we’ve also made some SXSW voting widgets that are configurable to any panel. Grab them here and here and put them on your site!

PPS – Don’t know anything about SXSW? Grab their blidget and keep up to date on all the happenings with this awesome festival:

What countries are those, exactly?  Well, here’s a (shhh – super secret!) chart from our internal metrics.

Sorry that United Kingdom and The Netherlands get cut off in this picture – since this is internal only it hasn’t gotten the Widgetbox UE treatment…  Anyways, you can see that we have the most distribution in the US and Europe, which isn’t too surprising.  What I find more fascinating is the “other” category.

You may or may not know this, but there are different answers for  the question “How many countries are there in the world?” The UN now recognizes 192 independent countries, The US State Department recognizes 194. and apparently most World Almanacs list 193 (source for this info is here).  So, does that mean Widgetbox is somehow being seen in more countries than there are in the world?  Like maybe in Outer Space by robots???  Nope – it means that some of the countries whose residents see our widgets aren’t independent nations.  There are 244 total possible “country-type” entities in the world.  So, on August 18th, 2008 from 12 AM to 12 PM, Widgetbox widgets were only not seen in 31 possible countries.  Plus, if you look at this distribution over a period of one week, or even one month, our widgets were seen in 217 countries for both periods, which means that our massive distribution is normal – there wasn’t something funky going on. That’s pretty hoTTT.

Some of my personal faves from yesterday’s full list are the 45,132 widget impressions that came from Taiwan (vs. the 33,064 that came from China, which I find interesting), the 10,059 impressions that came from Brunei Darussalam (bonus points if you can tell me where that is!), the 4,253 impressions that came from Iceland, and the 101 impressions that came from the Federated States of Micronesia.  You may also find it interesting that Iran got more hits than Iraq (5,911 vs. 614), and that Afghanistan and North Korea were nowhere on the list.  And who brought up the caboose yesterday?  Come on Turkmenistan – you saw one widget; we know you want more!!!

Pretty fun stuff.  Who knew you could get such a good geography lesson from widgets?  That’s the power of the Interwebs!