Thursday, May 17, 2007

Digital dark ages. Are you still asking, "What are widgets and who are Slide and RockYou!?

Business Week department editor Heather Green reports in this blog that
With 150 million daily slide shows served, Slide is claiming to be the biggest widget
company. Impressive numbers, but I was speaking with RockYou yesterday and they say that they're serving 100 million widgets a day. Of course, as folks start claiming big numbers, we're going to need outside ways of verifying them.


For those who are still in the digital dark ages, you may be asking, "what are widgets, and who are Slide and RockYou!?"

So to add a little insight:

Slide helps you publish and discover personalized Slide Shows of photos and other digital content. Launched in 2005 by PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, Slide lets you use photos and other digital content to publish and discover the people and things that matter to you. Slide can be embedded onto any website, viewed on your desktop or shared with your friends or fans.

RockYou! creates and distributes the most popular self-expression widgets on the web. RockYou!'s viral accessories can be used to enhance the look and feel of any blog, personal website, and are used on social networks like MySpace, Bebo, or Facebook. RockYou! widgets include photo slide shows, glitter text and voicemail accessories that enable people to stand out on social networks.

Widget: (As per Wikipedia since this definition hasn't hit Merriam-Webster's yet) In computer programming, a widget (or control) is an interface element that a computer user interacts with, such as a window or a text box. Widgets are sometimes qualified as virtual to distinguish them from their physical counterparts, e.g. virtual buttons that can be clicked with a mouse cursor, vs. physical buttons that can be pressed with a finger. Widgets are often packaged together in widget toolkits. Programmers use widgets to build graphical user interfaces (GUIs). Another definition can be found at dict.die.net.

Bottom line: These are all tools to help you communicate more efficiently and effectively in the digital age. How can attorneys use them ethically? That's yet to be discovered.

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