Massively Multi-player Online Game Widgets

Client side & hosted widgets

2008-01-23T15:49:00.000-05:00

So I shut down my mmogwidgets web site. The burden of running my own Amazan EC2 instance, web server, and running a J2EE site was just too much. And the cost was a little out of whack for what it should cost to just run a web site. I was paying ~$70 a month just to run the instance.

There have been a lot of recent advances in the client side AJAX frameworks like Dojo, Ext, etc. I figured, why not do it all client side, offload the processing requirements to the client, and let the widget platform host the widget? There would be $0 cost to me both monetarily and time-wise to maintain the server/web server/application.

What I found out was, it is entirely feasible. So long as everything you're widget is doing is capable of being hosted by the third party widget platform. In my case, there was some flash in the widget that is hosted by another third party website...and apparently you can't include flash in a page that is hosted on a different domain. I don't think Widgetbox allows me to host flash on their servers...so I'm stuck.

Has anyone done anything like this? If so, what were your workarounds for these kinds of issues?

P.S. What is this "Flex" thing I keep hearing about? Some kind of next-gen Flash? I guess I'll have to do some research.

Been Busy

2007-10-12T11:43:00.000-04:00

It's been a little while since my last post. I just wanted to let you all know that I'm not gone and the widget, my website, and this blog are not going to fade away.

Here's a short summary of some of the features that I'll be working on adding to the widget soon.

A vertical layout so that the signature can be included on the sidebar of blogs or other pages where horizontal space is at a premium.
The ability to set your signature portrait.
The ability to set your guild's website URL if you don't want it to default to the Armory's guild URL.
Adding support for non en_us armory profiles, e.g. Korean, Chinese, etc since those come from Armory's at their own distinct Armory URLs.
Making the Server selection of the Widget into a pick list.
Making the signature generally smaller.

And non widget related improvements:

Adding a content management system to the www.mmogwidgets.com website so that I can more easily update the front page as well as do things like archiving, permalinks, trac-backs, etc. I'll probably be evaluating TypePad and WordPress, and MovableType. Your suggestions are welcome.
Evaluating some of the web 2.0 AJAX frameworks as a replacement for JSF. I've determined that site is not going to be so much of an application as it is mostly a user friendly interface to widgets and other related content. Some of those AJAX frameworks have really slick widgets that make laying out a site and adding dynamic (read:Asynchronous) content a snap.
Flash. I thought it might be useful to learn Flash in order to make my widgets more friendly to sites like Facebook and MySpace. However in the recent wake of FBJS and now MySpace's announcement that they're going to be releasing a developer application this might just go on the far back burner.

All for now, I hope you're enjoying the widget. I'll let you know when these features near completion.

P.S. The widget is up to 450+ subscriptions! Thanks to all my users! :)

Warcraft Signature Facebook App

2007-09-22T21:00:00.001-04:00

If you want to add the World of Warcraft Signature Widget to your Facebook page follow these steps:

1. Go to http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/world-of-warcraft-signature-widget.
2. Click the "Get Widget" button.
3. Click "Add to Facebook".
4. Click "Install Widget".
5. Rejoice!

Facebook doesn't allow you to list your apps in their app directory until it's installed by at least five users. So if you want to, go out and install it today so I can list it in their directory :). Thanks!

FBJS + Widgetbox = HOT

2007-09-22T20:46:00.001-04:00

So, I logged in to Widgetbox today to a pleasant suprise. They now support adding their widgets to Facebook as an application. I'm not sure on this but I guess I noticed the ability to add my World of Warcraft Signature Widget as a Facebook app because Facebook has officially rolled out FBJS.

Widgetbox must have been working on this for a while because they've got a really slick wizard that walks you through the process step by step. They open an iFrame with Facebook in it so you don't even leave the Widgetbox wizard page to follow the instructions.

It's as simple as adding the "developer" application to your Facebook page, creating a new Facebook app, then copy and pasting a couple URL's from widgetbox into your Facebook app configuration page. Sweet!

Widgetbox also offers the ability to add the widget's Facebook app to your profile directly from the Widgetbox subscriptions page. The entire process is well thought out and easy to do.
One last note, Widgetbox is also offering to share advertising revenue for the app. They promote the app, find interested advertisers, and then share the revenue with you 50/50.

WoW Sig Widget: New Artwork

2007-08-28T23:04:00.000-04:00

The WoW Character Signature Widget has been updated with some truly exceptional custom artwork. The art was actually done by my Sister. Thanks sis for such a great job! Very nice.

If you are interested in contacting her to get some art done for whatever, you can contact me through this blog or via my email that is listed on the mmogwidgets web site.

Important: if you already have a subscription to the signature widget (through widgetbox) you may need to log in to widgetbox and edit your subscription and update the size dimensions for the widget. You will want to set them to 425 width x 240 height.

It would be nice if Widgetbox would update all subscriptions of the widget when I modify the widgets default width and height.

Penny Arcade in Wired

2007-08-28T11:23:00.000-04:00

There's a great article on Wired about my heroes from Penny Arcade. Those two have the coolest life ever.

And they've got some hilarious comics linked with a "reference decoder" and a "jargon translator" to help those non-geeks figure out what the comics are about. Not that we want you in on our little secret world.

Oh, and a slideshow preview of their upcoming game "Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode I"

100 Subscriptions

2007-08-27T23:47:00.000-04:00

I'm over the 100 subscription mark for my World of Warcraft Character Signature Widget. 140 at the time of this writing, to be exact. I know it's not a lot yet, but honestly I'm flattered that that many people like it.

On to 1000!

Immaculate Recreation

2007-08-24T10:42:00.000-04:00

I'm a big Rams fan...and Isaac Bruce is probably my favorite Ram. Here's a great video of some guy playing against the Rams in Madden (I think) and the immaculate reception is recreated.

Widgetbox Wish List

2007-08-23T10:32:00.000-04:00

Widgetbox recently sent me an email asking for a wish list of sorts. So here goes:

Publication of widgets in the galleries of the various homepage sites like iGoogle, Netvibes, etc. Right now they give you the ability to place the widget on your homepage of those sites but they don't (AFAIK) offer the ability to make it discoverable in those galleries.
"In-Widget" customization. Let users customize and place the widget all from within the widget itself. Having to click through to the Widgetbox page probably discourages some users from completing the "conversion" process.

Thats all I can think of right now, I'm tired. I was up all last night trying to figure out how to get Facelets portlets working in Pluto. :(

Widget Platform Saturation?

2007-08-21T15:49:00.001-04:00

Over the last couple days I've just come to realize how many widget hosting & analytics companies there are right now. You've heard me mention a few of them that I've been working with recently, Widgetbox and Clearspring. Today I found yourminis, yesterday I found Springwidgets. Thats four services that all claim to do pretty much the same thing. I'm left wondering if there's room for all these in the widget space or if there's going to be a shake out and some will either be consumed or just fade away.

I read an article today on the blog by Don Dodge, Director of Business Development for Microsoft's Emerging Business Team. He talks about the Remora Business Model, that he describes as these widgets riding the wave of popularity of MySpace, Facebook, etc. Well, thats exactly what I want to do, but the difficulty comes in figuring out how to monetize that.

Some hosts are buying up their "symbiots". MySpace bought Photobucket for $250,000,000 and MyBlogLog was bought by Yahoo for $10,000,000. Thats a lot of zeros for a widget. Someone thinks these widgets are worth it. I'll tell you this much, if a host offers me $10 mil you can be sure I'm taking it :p

I'm not sure why he thinks that widgets have no value. As a widget developer I spend lots of my time creating services that add value to a users experience on any given page. If it's something that plays well with other widgets and services out there, all of a sudden you've got a new and different ability that maybe didn't exist before.

The real question is, how much value? Charging a small fee to the user to subscribe to your widget might not be out of the question, if the price is right.

Clearspring apologizes

2007-08-21T15:44:00.001-04:00

I received a no excuses apology today from Hooman Radfar, CEO of Clearspring. Apparently they had a mix-up in their forum monitoring procedures that caused the delays in my feedback and troubleshooting.

While it doesn't help me resolve the bug, that still persists, it is nice to get an apology for the slow responses. Clearspring seems genuinely interested in working with even their smallest developers (that would be people like me).

Anyway, thanks Hooman. I'm still trying to work out the issue with your developers on the forum, even if I have my widget hosted elsewhere.

"My God, It's full of Widgets!"

2007-08-20T13:20:00.000-04:00

As you can see here, I've turned my blog into a widget thanks to Widgetbox. They make it as easy as entering your blog URL, image URL, and some layout settings. Pretty nice. So now you can all go out and put my blog on your blog through this widget :p

Widgetbox Panels

2007-08-20T12:53:00.000-04:00

Widgetbox has a nice feature that they call "Panels". It allows you to manage collections of your subscribed Widgetbox widgets including their layouts and any text you want to add. You can see an example of this at the bottom of this blog. I created a panel titled "World of Warcraft" that has one widget in it, my WoW Character Signature Widget.

You can add these panels to your blog template and then arrange them any way you wish. Mine is at the bottom of the template and so will always be visible after the last post.

Widget Statistics

2007-08-20T12:41:00.001-04:00

This blog is generating the most views of my WoW Character Signature widget of all the sites that it is viewable on right now. That list includes iGoogle, Netvibes, Widgetbox, and my website MMOGWidgets.

It has also generated the most "referrals". A referral is when someone clicks the "Get Widget" button on the widget and views the widget's page on Widgetbox. Unfortunately none of those referrals has resulted in a "conversion", that is someone subscribing to the widget as a result of a referral.

MMOGWidgets actually leads in the "conversions" category.

Widget Platforms

2007-08-19T11:54:00.000-04:00

So, Widgetbox is currently down? I'm viewing my subscription of the signature widget in Netvibes and it says "Widgetbox is temporarily unavailable. Please try back later."

Sigh. Whatever happened to 24/7 uptime? All in all these widget companies have some distance to go before they're as robust as I expect them to be.

The Clearspring guys finally turned up and responded to the forum posts and actually posted here on the blog as well. It is appreciated. The problems haven't been fixed yet, but now that I know they're alive and responding, there is hope.

Update: Widgetbox is back up and the signature widget is working again. It was a short outage, if you can call it that, unsure if that was planned maintenance or actual downtime.

Clearspring? Not anymore.

2007-08-18T15:04:00.000-04:00

Because I can't seem to get any answers from them about a couple problems with the widgets that they produce.

They were good at first, until I ran into some problems (on their end). It was virtually impossible to get support. I tried PM'ing their most active developer on the forums, no response. I tried posting the problems in their "Help & Support" forum, no responses. No acknowledgments that something was wrong on their side, no suggestions, no word that they were even looking into it. In general, their forums have a concerning lack of activity.

I posted my first problem on their forum on Tuesday, August 7'th. It has now been two work weeks and another problem thread posted on their forums. I detailed all the steps I took on my end to debug the problems and provided links to examples of the problems live in the field. No replies.

Now, I understand that their developers might be busy and they may have policies about disclosing bugs or errors but c'mon! They should have been able to at least respond to my private message with some sort of help. Eleven days of broken widgets is an eternity.

As a result, I've switched to Widgetbox. At the bottom of the blog is the widget through Widgetbox.

Clearspring

2007-08-15T10:17:00.001-04:00

When I started this project I settled on using Clearspring as my widget platform. It has a number of attractive features that influenced my decision.

It offers turnkey syndication to many popular "start page" or personal page sites like iGoogle, Netvibes, Pageflakes, etc.
It offers turnkey syndication to blogs and other services like Blogger, Digg, Stumble, etc.
It was based on standard and well known technologies like Javascript and Flash.
It has amazing analytics including:

Number of widget views.
Number of unique viewers.
Domains that views are coming from.
Viral hubs that are spreading the widget.
Where people are viewing the widget from geographically.
3D graphs and charts with modifiable date ranges and data sets for custom reporting.

The "get & share" button that makes it easy for viewers who like the widget to simply grab it, customize it's settings, and automatically add it to their favorite pages via their turnkey syndication or by embedding.

All in all Clearspring has turned out to be a decent choice.

There are some things that I think they need to work on however. First, I feel they should offer at least two out of the box configurations for the "get and share" button. Widgets that have a larger width than height do not play well with their default button layout.

They offer a Premium platform that offers customization options for the button but the cost is prohibitive for people like me who are doing this with no start-up funding and all expenses coming out of pocket.

It's unclear to me why they see the customizable "get & share" button as being a value add. Personally I see more value in their analytics and turnkey syndication than their button customization.

I need to learn Flash and write a version of the widget in it so that it will work on sites that disable or gimp Javascript like MySpace and Facebook. If anyone knows a good Flash tutorial or book let me know.

MMOG Widgets

2007-06-15T17:31:00.000-04:00

Here I am again starting another new blog. Hopefully this one will see more use than the last one. We'll see. I suppose the main topics this blog will cover will be related to my website at MMOGWidgets. That should include things like massively multi-player online games, technology, widgets, web services, SOA, etc.

I'll probably sprinkle personal things in here too since I'm not really interested in maintaining multiple blogs. I barely had time for the one blog that I had before, nevermind multiple blogs.