Now that the new Lists feature has rolled out to everyone and become a big part of Twitter, the microblogging service has taken the logical next step and launched list widgets. That means you can embed a live version of your favorite Twitter list anywhere on the web. It doesn't even have to be your list, actually: if someone else has a favorite that you enjoy, you can make a widget of that, too.

Like the List-to-RSS solution I wrote about recently, list widgets allow you to follow a list without following everyone on it. Widgets also make it very easy to customize the appearance of your lists, as well as a bunch of other options. Live auto-updating is included - or you can set how often it loads new tweets - and you can also control the number of tweets that appear at once. Don't want to show avatars or hashtags? That's fine too, there are some checkboxes that will take care of it. This set of features makes widgets a great way to share your favorite Twitter content outside of Twitter.

[via TechCrunch]

After Adobe's recent acquisition of analytics giant Omniture for $1.8 billion, there was a lot of speculation that Adobe was beginning a foray into the advertising. Now we've got some more clues, since Adobe's partnering with Gigya, a company that distributes widgets and advertising. Now, Adobe's got its fingers in every part of the process, from content creation to ads to analytics.

Adobe's new Distribution Manager lets developers share their Flash widgets on 70 sites, tracks traffic for the widgets, and serves ads. Destinations include Facebook, MySpace and iGoogle, amongst others. It also supports mobile devices, including Windows Mobile and Symbian phones. The iPhone is also (sort of) supported, but without Flash, the widgets have to be part of approved app store apps. Developers can follow their traffic and ads with - what else? - an Adobe Air app.

[via Techcrunch]

Facebook just took another baby step in what seems to be an ongoing move out of the walled garden and toward public information streaming. Now admins of pages or applications on Facebook can share their Facebook activity streams on other websites via a few new widgets. One of them even allows Facebook users to interact with the stream right from the embedded widget.

The most exciting of the new widgets, the Live Stream Box, works two ways, using tabs to switch between them. Friends mode displays your Facebook stream the way you'd see it, with all of your friends' latest updates. Everyone Watching mode shows you the activity of other Facebook users who are also viewing the page where the widget is embedded. There's also a Fan Box that shows the stream of your fan page, and people can like and comment on posts using the widget. The new widgets don't replace Facebook badges (did anybody ever use those?), so individuals can still use those show off their Facebook accounts.

Google wants to make it as easy as possible for you to place its content, like news feeds, maps and calendars, on your site. Apparently, using the existing APIs wasn't simple enough, so now there's Google Web Elements, for even easier installation of custom Google widgets. Web Elements is starting with eight different modules: Calendar, Conversation, News, Custom Search, Maps, Presentations, Spreadsheets and YouTube News.

Of the eight, Conversation and Custom Search are the two I see actually gaining large userbases. A lot of sites have comments or shoutboxes, and a lot of them already have custom Google Search boxes. Those aren't going anyway any time soon, and it can't hurt that Google's made them so easy to install. Web Elements doesn't seem to be targeted at major sites, but it does offer some features that beginning -- or just time-crunched -- site owners wouldn't build for themselves.

We've showcased plenty of software before that brings Mac functionality to PCs - like Standalone Stacks, DExpose2, and Flyakite. What about all those fancy dashboard widgets? Surely there's a way to utilize them on your Windows desktop.

Why, of course there is - with Kludgets! It's an open source project built on Webkit and Nokia's QT framework. On the author's site you'll find four basic widgets to get you started and there are plenty of places to find more on the net - like WidgetWorld.

The first Kludgets beta was just released last week, so bear in mind that not all widgets are going to work and you may encounter some stability issues.

If you're a Mac user stuck using a PC at work and are jonesing for your widgets, Kludgets is a simple way to access them.

[via Shell Extension City]

If you shoot high-res photos, and you're looking for a way to show them off that doesn't take up as much space as the full-size image, but doesn't hide all the details like a thumbnail, you might want to give Closr a look. Closr lets you upload a photo, and transforms it into a widget that viewers can zoom in and out of. That way, they can either see a thumbnail, or zoom way in and drag to look at different parts of your image.

The widgets also have some other useful functions, like a full-screen button, and another button that resets the photo to its starting size. There's minimal branding and excess junk attached to them, too, so they're not going to make your site look terrible when you embed them. If you have the particular problem of finding a way to display your large photos, Closr might be the solution.

The rumors were true. Microsoft plans to support internet widgets in Windows Mobile 6.5.Widgets are basically bits of internet code that can run like native apps on your mobile phone. In other words, rather than launching a program that's taking up space on your mobile device or loading a web browser and then navigating to a web page, you'll be able to just click a button and launch a web service in a standalone window.

You can already use these types of widgets on desktop computer operating systems, the iPhone, or the upcoming Palm Pre with WebOS. Windows Mobile 6.5 support could make it a lot easier for developers to create web apps that will run on multiple platforms with minor modifications. Instead of developing for the iPhone, Windows Mobile, OS X, Windows 7, and so on, they'll be able to develop for the web and make sure their apps are compliant with the widget engines on each platform.

Right now, Microsoft is showing off screen shots of a few sample widgets for Live Search, stocks, and weather. More information will be available to developers in April.

Sobees, a desktop widget engine that's been in private beta since March is now open to the public. The public beta version includes a ton of updates, and I have to say the new Sobees look a lot nicer than the version I looked at earlier this year.

The Sobees platform is designed to let you access web content on your desktop without launching a web browser. There's an RSS reader and a handful of other widgets including a news aggregator and an election 2008 widget that is filled with up to date news on the US presidential election.

There's also a search bar that will let you conduct web searches (using Windows Live Search only for now) without launching a web browser.

The overall platform is rather slick and the widgets are much more attractive than the hexagon-shaped widgets Sobees was showing off in March. But I have to wonder whether it makes that much sense to launch a widget engine whose sole purpose is to provide information that you could easily access with a few clicks in a web browser. Maybe I'm wrong, but I imagine most people using internet-connected computers these days have a web browser open more often than it's closed, which makes Sobees rather redundant, no matter how slick it looks.

KlipFolio is a desktop application that lets you access online content like RSS feeds, weather forecasts, Flickr slideshows, YouTube videos, and other web content. We first checked out KlipFolio more than two years ago when it was little more than a widgetized RSS reader. But the application has come a long way since then.

You can now use KlipFolio to subscribe to all sorts of content. Pretty much anything with an RSS feed is fair game, but you can also browse the KlipFolio web site for specialized "klip sets," including email notifiers, social network updates, or content from webcams. There are also klip sets that let you monitor shoutcast streams or see the latest updates to the iTunes music store.

KlipFolio 5 beta D also has a slick new interface. You can dock the application to the top, bottom, left, or right side of your screen or let it float free. You can rearrange your klips by dragging and dropping. And you can choose from a variety of customizable skins.

The Windows application is also pretty lightweight compared with other desktop widget engines, eating just under 10MB of RAM during my test.

[via MakeUseOf]

NewsGator, the company behind award-winning RSS readers FeedDemon, NetNewsWire and NewsGator Go!, has just released an update to its widget platform, in the form of Editor's Desk 2.1.

Editor's Desk is a web-based tool for creating widgets that can display dynamic content (using RSS) that can then be embedded into your website, Facebook page (as an app), Blogger, TypePad, NetVibes, iGoogle,Pageflakes, Live.com and Live Spaces.

Version 2.1 boasts an improved interface that is not only better looking, but easier to use. Version 2.1 has also added two new widget templates, a search tool (for premium subscribers), the ability to clone widgets and a way to monitor the feeds within your widgets for problems.

We played around with the new version of Editor's Desk and were impressed with how easy the whole creation process really was. To create a widget, you can either add your own RSS feeds or choose a collection of feeds from categories provided by NewsGator. The free version of the service only provides minimal customization options for your widgets, you can select from a set a templates and then modify some of the colors, but if you pay for the premium version of the service, you can customize the CSS and HTML of the widgets. Some companies like USA Today and The Discovery Channel have already done that with spectacular results.

It's been about a month since Google announced its new Friend Connect platform which lets you add social widgets to any blog or web site. If you've been waiting patiently to see these widgets start popping up on the wild, wild web, it looks like the wait is over. Tech blogger Orli Yakuel has added a widget to her blog, Go2Web20.

The widget looks a lot like the recent readers widgets you find from services like MyBlogLog. But Friend Connect offers users the opportunity to interact with their contacts and communities more deeply without leaving the current web page. For example, Yakuel has added a comment widget that lets FriendConnect users who sign up to be members of her blog to leave comments that are visible to other members.

When you visit a site with a FriendConnect widget you can invite your Google contacts or friends from other sites including MySpace, Hi5, Orkut, or Plaxo to join the community.

Yakuel says there are only a handful of Google gadgets available at the moment, but says there is a section where you can grab gadgets from third party developers, much like the gadget gallery for iGoogle and Google Desktop.

[via ReadWriteWeb]

Yesterday we told you about a new desktop widget engine called Sobees which is in private beta. We also told you that if you wanted in on the private beta you had to sign up at the Sobees homepage. But Francois from the Sobees team has been kind enough to share 10 invites with Download Squad readers. Just be one of the first ten people to leave a comment on this post and we'll email you an invitation.

Keep in mind, this is beta software. And not beta like Gmail is still in beta. While the widget engine is fairly impressive, it's also sluggish and a memory hog. But we suspect both of these problems will diminish over time. And if you want to keep an eye on the application's progress, and are willing to share feedback with the developers, just leave a comment below.

Update: And we've got our winners. We've turned off the comments for this post and will be sending out the invite codes momentarily. Thanks for playing!

While we often find ourselves thinking "the last thing this world needs is another desktop widget engine," we might be willing to make an exception for Sobees. While we'd forgive you if you mistook Sobees as nothing but a desktop widget engine like Google Desktop, Yahoo! Widget Engine, or Vista's gadgets and the Dashboard in OS X, it's actually much more.

First of all, yes, Sobees does let you load modules on your desktop for doing things like making notes, showing the time and date, or interacting with the web. There are also nifty RSS and Twitter clients, and a web browser with a built in web search feature that lest you sort results by images or text links.

But there are at least three things that set Sobees apart from most other desktop widget applications.

1. Sobees widgets are highly customizable. You can resize any widget by clicking on a portion of the edge and dragging it in or out. You can also make widgets translucent or opaque, and choose from a variety of options for each widget.
2. Sobees widgets interact with one another, and you can share content from widgets with your contacts. For example, you can save an item from an RSS feed and share it with other Sobees users.
3. Your data is synchronized with a remote server, which means you can install Sobees on multiple computers and changes to one will be reflected on another. If you'd like to have a separate setup for your work and home computers, there's no problem though, because you can set up multiple desktops.

Sobees is currently Windows only, but according to CenterNetworks, a Mac client is in the works. An API will also be released eventually which should dramatically increase the number of widgets available. Sobees is quite clearly still beta software. It takes a fairly long time to load the application, it freezes up periodically, and it uses close to 200MB of RAM. But Sobees is worth keeping an eye on. If you want to help test the software, you an sign up to participate in the private beta.

Yesterday we gave you a few pointers on pimping out your WordPress blog. So today we figured it was time to point out a couple of quick and easy ways to make your Blogspot site look a bit less like you ripped a page out of Blogging for Dummies.

As you may be aware, part of the reason Google's Blogger service is so popular is that it's incredibly easy to use. All files are hosted on Google's server, and all you have to do is pick a template and start writing. You can also add widgets to your site by choosing from a list of options in the layout tab of Blogger. If you really know what you're doing you can customize the HTML for your page layout or add custom widgets to your sidebar.

But even if you don't know a lick about HTML, Blogger has a few hidden tricks up its sleeve. If you go to draft.blogger.com instead of www.blogger.com, you can access a bunch of experimental widgets that Google has decided aren't ready for mainstream consumption just yet.