Widget Summit 2008

Widget Summit hosted its third annual conference November 3rd and 4th at Hotel Nikko in San Francisco. Widget Summit is the premier widget conference educating hundreds of attendees a year on business and development best practices in the emerging widget industry.

The Widget Summit 2008 conference program included a detailed look inside the widget platforms changing the way users interact with rich content across multiple environments. Widget Summit will help you reach and engage new audiences across multiple platforms including over 180 million Windows Vista desktops, 25 million active Facebook users, 10 million iPhone smartphones, or the millions of users that call My Yahoo! and iGoogle home every day. The world of widgets reaches beyond a standard web address and into the desktops, mobile phones, social networks, blogs, and personal homepages of today’s fragmented online engagements.

Check out the following Widget Summit 2008 videos:

Jonathan Carrigan of CBC shares business lessons learned while completing his MBA and in practice with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Lessons Learned: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation from Niall Kennedy on Vimeo.

Paul Lindner of hi5 presents on the widget container and its worldwide audience.

Widgets Around the World: hi5 from Niall Kennedy on Vimeo.

Laurent Sanchez of ACCESS presents Japanese use of mobile widgets at Widget Summit 2008.

Widgets Around the World: ACCESS from Niall Kennedy on Vimeo.

Will Price from Widgetbox and Freddy Mini from Netvibes discuss widget discovery via galleries with moderator Niall Kennedy.

Meet the Galleries from Niall Kennedy on Vimeo.

iPhone developers share their mobile development experience on this new platform. Brian Fling of Fling Media, Tom Conrad of Pandora, Dom Sagolla of DollarApp, and Sunil Verma of Mobclix discuss the iPhone native application platform with moderator Raven Zachary.

iPhone Developer Panel from Niall Kennedy on Vimeo.

Andreas Weigend presents Widget Data Strategies at Widget Summit 2008.

Widget Data Strategies from Niall Kennedy on Vimeo.

Steve Souders of Google presents High Performance Widgets at Widget Summit 2008.

High Performance Widgets from Niall Kennedy on Vimeo.

Chris Schalk of Google and Paul Lindner of hi5 Networks present OpenSocial Basics at Widget Summit 2008.

OpenSocial Basics from Niall Kennedy on Vimeo.

Max Newbould of MySpace provides an introduction to creating OpenSocial applications on the MySpace platform.

MySpace Applications from Niall Kennedy on Vimeo.

Max Engel of MySpace presents MySpace Data Portability at Widget Summit 2008.

MySpace Data Portability from Niall Kennedy on Vimeo.

Ryan Sarver of Skyhook Wireless and Chris Butler share the current state-of-the-art for geolocation-aware widget implementations and the data targeting available within.

Geolocation-aware Widgets from Niall Kennedy on Vimeo.

An excellent ‘related’ read: Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data

Zune HD(?) - Images above are renderings, not the actual thing.

Let it be known: I’ve never owned an iPod or iPhone (nor do I want one). Matter of fact, I still use a 1st Generation Microsoft Zune for all of my listening needs; it works great… so why upgrade? The 30gb storage space is more than enough, and the LCD screen is plenty, although rarely used. I love the automatic software update too.

Now it is rumored that Zune is releasing a “Zune HD” which appears to be an upgraded MP3 player but also (down the road) Microsoft’s answer to the very ‘hip’ and heavily marketed iPhone. Zune for mobile phones – picture that!

But will a more slim, redesigned Zune with a tiny 16:9 aspect ratio screen, capable of playing back HD media be enough? What about a touch screen with TV-output such as a mini-HDMI port? As an avid video and tech enthusiast, my answer is no, these features will not be enough to change the minds of Mac nation.

Either way, I’ll be sticking to my trusty ole 1st gen. Zune.

Need an MP3 player that can store 30,000 songs, 25,000 photos, or 375 hours of video? My next upgrade is a 120GB Zune – the thing is a beast!