wayne on August 14, 2008
If you haven't heard the news yet, Blogger has completed and released the ability to add gadgets to your blog. The gadgets are super easy to add to your blog, and you don't need anyone like me to tell you how to do it. I'm including the help video from Blogger.com themselves to do that.
There are 8 different categories already defined, and you can even add your own gadgets that you find around the web! That's really cool.
The coolest thing about gadgets is that they are easy to work with, they bring the technology to more people, and now we should start seeing a whole new mess of stuff on blogger.com blogs.
The only thing I can recommend here, is do not over-do it. It would be easy to drop all these different gadgets that each have their own look, and their own particular function. Not only will these potentially make your page load much slower for your visitors. I guess what I'm trying to say is, ask yourself is this gadget for me, or my visitors? That answer will tell you if you should add it to your blog or not. As a blogger looking to gain a large readership, I am very critical of the gadgets and functionality I throw up on my blog. However, if I were a hobbyist, then perhaps I wouldn't mind all the bells and whistles. In the end, make sure the gadget helps you to reach your goal, whatever that may be.
Here are a few helpful links I found along the way while digging in to this:
I'll be tinkering around with the gadgets over the next few days to see all they can do. I may even go build myself a gadget over at Google Gadgets. Cheers!
