Details on how Sprout's foray into social media campaigns will work on a technical level are not outlined in the provided documentation. But, if it is telling us that a marketer or advertiser can use their product and deploy it cross-platform without any coding skills, it could potentially add up to a big cost savings overall and may make the difference between Sprout and one of its competitors. Plus, one of those platforms is Facebook, which means instant viral exposure to millions of active user accounts.

Sprout users can now integrate Twitter, Seesmic, Brightcove and other web services into their widgets. The SDK will be opening up slowly to support as many services as developers can imagine.

If you've tried SproutBuilder before, you probably noticed that it launched with some kinks. Our three favorite improvements in the new version are:

Page History

Each page in a Sprout widget's authoring space now displays the last 20 editing actions taken there, making it easy to revert back and take bigger risks without fear.

Effects

Elements can be set easily to flash at hover, slide in at page load or perform a variety of other "effects." A simple enough matter, this allows widget authors to add some helpful finesse.

Text Control

Displaying RSS feeds is one of the handiest ways to make Sprouts dynamic. Previously the text output was ugly and unchangable. That is no longer the case, making Sprout a whole lot more usable as a production level tool.

SDK

The launch of the Sproutbuilder platform holds a whole lot of potential. This little tool already packs a big punch, but there's nothing like opening up to outside developers to amplify the impact of your own work.

Right now you'll need to apply for access to the SDK, but Sprout says they hope that will change soon. Its capabilities will grow increasingly sophisticated over time, as well. Seesmic integration, for example, will soon include the ability to record videos to Seesmic from a Sprout, not just view videos. Google Forms integration is interesting - what else would you like to see available in a widget? Ribbit click-to-call is live now and couldn't be easier to use.

Below is another example of a good widget built using Sprout. Coincidentally, it's from my alma mater, but from the kind of kids I'd give a dirty look to whenever I saw them in the halls. None the less, they make a mean widget.

"...in the tech blogging world, Don Park has recently written an album full of posts about Wikis, Dave Winer is in the midst of recording his thoughts on political blogs, Jon Udell has written a variety of classics on topics such as Universal Canvas. There are even the blogging equivalent of Unplugged albums - check out Mark Pilgrim's These Days."

While I encourage ambitious bloggers to be topic-focused, variety is the spice of life. An excellent way to keep things interesting is to explore a different concept every week or month (or whatever time period suits you). I have to keep reminding myself of this too. As I said in the Sept 03 post:

"Perhaps I'll start writing weblog "albums" - there'll be about 10 posts per album and each album will have a different unifying theme."

Hmmm. I have some ideas about how to do this in my Web 2.0-focused blog. Stay tuned ;-)

bonus link: Wikipedia list of concept albums. Includes this description of the Green Day album: "A Bay Area suburbanite named Jesus of Suburbia flees his broken home to experience city life, transforming into the rebellious St. Jimmy. Notable as a punk rock opera." More here (I heart Wikipedia).