Another Avenue to Tools and Communication
Webware this week carried an article announcing the new “Blizzard” version of PageFlakes. I rushed right over to PageFlakes and discovered an online facility of such power that I put together my own page, which presents this blog and lots of other writerly material in one place [some blog readers may wish to access the blog via this route]. Other writers may wish to try out service.
For those who don’t know, there are now a number of websites that allow users to easily put together substantial pages simply by selecting from a broad array of “widgets” or “gadgets.” These creatures are simply little boxes, within which a specialized activity takes place — blogs, uTube, Zoho documents, dictionaries, a visual thesaurus, translators, Google Scholar and much more, all assembled on one or more tabbed pages. Users can choose which widgets to install and can drag them around on the page into whatever order one wishes. Besides PageFlakes, other players in this arena are Google Homepage, NetVibes, YourMinis, Yahoo and others.
I’ve had a Yahoo homepage for years, so what’s all the fuss about? Well, these “widget” things provide remarkable power which can be easily set up. And PageFlakes Blizzard now adds in the element of sharing one’s page with the world via PageCasts, bridging the gap between traditional homepages and the hot arena of social networks such as MySpace and FaceBook. To help people find your page, it can be “tagged” to facilitate searches. My new page carries these tags: writer, writing, tools, software, productivity. I hope, of course, that PageFlakes will bring some of its millions of users over to my blog.
Writers are already utilizing social networks such as MySpace to help build an audience for their work. Recent technological developments at FaceBook within the past month have pundits declaring that it will overtake MySpace and become the dominant player in the social networking arena. And now PageFlakes has upped the ante yet again.
A couple of parting comments: I’ve found that currently iGoogle offers the widest and most useful array of widgets for writers, and I’ve set up my own Google Homepage, which I see whenever I do a Google search. At this point, however, Google does not allow publication of such pages for others to see — it’s simply a personal tool, a power one at that. I’ve also created a Becoming A Writer widget at YourMinis, which users can pick up and install right on their own pages, blogs and websites, showing them the last 10 posts of this blog. It appears, however, that YourMinis is running well behind in the internet race.
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Howdy, my name is Pat and I am creating a Google gadget directory. If you are interested, could you create a list of gadgets that you find useful for writers?
I will feature people (and link to them) from SEOish.com, my blog. If you have any suggestions or thoughts on how gadgets should be organized for writers, please let me know.