"Branded widgets are the refrigerator magnets of the digital age" "They hold the message, they're useful, they're cheap," - Richard Garfield

Mr. Garfield's point is a solid one, widgets carry branding and content in an easily distributed package. Many brands love the the large volume of content that can be included in a widget. Other brands love the organic ways widgets can be seeded and distributed through social networks. In either case, the widget retains its branded message while its placements spread virally through the digital community.

Affordable to create, at their core, widgets are small applications that can travel with branded content. The literal forefathers of the digital mashup, widgets are difficult to define precisely because they can take on nearly any shape, size or functionality. VM Foundry typically builds web widgets in Flash and Flex, using AS3 and converts desktop versions using Adobe Air.

What does a widget do?

And you can too. Check this out. Google announced last week that you can use the Google Analytics API to easily track events in Flash files. Basically, you can track events and page views in a Flash website or, more interesting, all of the interactivity in a Flash widget. The widget will be appearing outside of our website but you can report activity back to your same Google Analytics dashboard and make smart and profitable decisions.

With the holidays just around the corner stores everywhere are stocking up with the latest and greatest tech toys for every kid—both young and old. Like most of us, you might feel somewhat overwhelmed by the task of sorting through the hodgepodge of cameras, cell phones, blue-tooth devices and other gadgets to find that perfect gift. RadioShack is highlighting “The Best Gifts Ever!” to keep blogers, media, and other influencers informed of this year’s top toys. We’ve just launched a micro site to promote some of RadioShack’s “Best Gifts Ever” to ensure that you have ample time to drop hints. Check it out and Mira!

The iPhone 3G is an amazing device whose versatility and ease of use have made Apple a player in the smart phone market. But for people who work in digital media, the iPhone is lacking one terribly important piece of the puzzle: Flash & Flash Video support. There may be a bright spot on the horizon, PC World and FlashMagazine.com are each reporting that Adobe is currently developing a version of Flash for the iPhone. Embracing technology as pervasive as Flash is extremely important in a market which is about to experience a flood of advanced phone offerings.

Flash files have always been difficult for search engines to crawl and index but apparently Adobe has made significant progress in working with Google and Yahoo. Techcrunch is reporting that, "Adobe has created a special Flash player for the search engines that acts like a virtual user going through each application. It actually goes through the runtime of each Flash application and translates it into something the search engines can understand."

We've approached this issue by providing as much relevant textual content as possible with our Flash files including video transcripts. The one main issue this development does not address is deep linking which you can approach with variable as we have with we've this Pioneer Kuro campaign.

 

We just launched this banner campaign for CNBC with our friends at Yield. This is one horizontal banner and varitions of these brand ads are running on major financial sites.

This is a great little chat widget built in Flex. You can get here http://www.chatopica.com/widget/ if you're interested. The interesting thing is that this is a shared window/chat so you can keep it on your page or blog and follow the conversation without being on the host site. We're going to incorporate a version of this on a current idea management project so users can chat & follow ideas they support.

AMEX has a great campaign going that includes two powerful components of social media – user rating and widgets. You should check out the site at http://www.membersproject.com or just browse the widget below.

Adobe Sytems Incorporated has recently announced that they will be releasing Flash Lite 3 for mobile phones. Flash Lite 3 will support video capabilities and all it to be played through mobile phones thus advancing the mobile video market the same way Flash advanced the online video market. Now if we could just get the U.S. carriers to get on board the way the overseas carriers have.