But developers hoping to include their own widget-like notifications in the center were disappointed to find out that their only option was for text-based updates. However, thanks to a hack from developer Will Homer, there is now a way for jailbroken phones to run third-party widgets within the Notifications Center. Some of the first examples of these widgets are already out, and are ready for testing.

Homer, who goes by @WillFour20 on Twitter, tweeted a proof-of-concept based on his hack last week, showing a simple "Hello World" widget, showing the text . He has also posted templates for creating these notification center widgets online at GitHub for other developers to access.

Settings Widget

One of the first widgets to take advantage of this hack has now been released. This tweak, created by a 14-year old Italian developer known as qwertyoruiop, allows you access to basic settings, without having to launch the Settings app and delve into System Preferences. This is similar to the functionality provided by SBSettings, a popular jailbreak app that allowed for quick access to commonly used functions.

According to the blog RedmondPie, this widget lets you turn various functions off or on, like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Airplane mode, plus adjust the brightness and volume, and reboot, power off or "re-spring" the phone (refreshing the homescreen after applying jailbreak tweaks or themes).

Note: RedmondPie has installation details here.

Music Center Widget

A second custom widget known as MusicCenter created by developer Aaron C. Wright (@WrightsCS on Twitter) is also on the horizon. This widget will show you what song is currently playing in your Music app, along with the album artwork. Wright says additional features like "Tap to Tweet," music controls and other track information like rating and duration will come in later versions. This widget is not yet available for download.

With iOS 5, Apple has taken great pains to remove many of the temptations that once intrigued the jailbreaking community, from Wi-Fi sync options via iCloud to the pull-down notifications list itself and more. But with these custom widgets, jailbreakers looking for a richer experience than what Apple allows for out of the box will once again find a reason to hack their phones.

Image credit: Settings - iPhoneItalia.com; Other sources: iClarified, RedmondPie

Unfortunately, we have some bad news about that ground-breaking app: it's been killed. However, we have other exciting news that may lessen the blow.

Recognizr Dies, but TAT's Android UI's Live On

Sadly, the incredible augmented reality/facial recognition application known as Recognizr will not be launched as planned. The app was one of TAT's only consumer-facing efforts and it relied on the facial recognition algorithms from a company called Polar Rose. When Apple acquired Polar Rose in September, the move effectively killed the Android application in turn. (We noticed in August, for example, that it had missed its promised launch date.) At this point, Recognizr won't launch unless another facial recognition company comes to TAT, looking to partner.

TAT may not have crossed your radar until you read about the Recognizr app, but the company has developed a number of smartphone interfaces which you have probably already used, without even knowing it. The company is just not able to talk about those designs due to its agreements with the handset makers and carriers it works with who ship the user interfaces as their own. In fact, I discovered that one of my favorite somethings on a such-and-such device I have in my possession was actually designed by TAT! Sorry to be vague, but that's how it goes.

I was able to catch up with the company at this week's Open Mobile Summit and they gave me a glimpse of some of the designs they have in the works. Below are a few quick videos I shot of the new user interfaces in action. (You can visit TAT's homepage for more professional versions, I just used my iPhone).

Although there aren't specifics to reveal at this time, the "TAT Home" collection of 3D homescreens (you may remember seeing these around the Web earlier this year, for example, on Engadget), is shipping on some Android devices "sometime next year." The devices are on a European carrier, TAT co-founder Paul Blomdahl told me. Discussions with other device manufacturers and carriers are happening now too.

While the homescreen widgets are impressive, I'm personally more fond of the 3D contacts list and mapping application myself, but there are no official deals involving these interfaces yet. (Will someone please change that?)

Android Homescreen Widgets

As described above, these are TAT's Android homescreen replacements which include its own 3D widgets for things like Weather and music.

2D to 3D Maps

TAT has designed a mapping application which goes from 2D mode to 3D mode just by tilting the phone.

2D to 3D Contacts

This contacts application goes from 2D to 3D mode, like the maps one above does, by tilting the phone. In 3D mode, status updates, Tweets and other information hovers above a contact's name. (Sorry I filmed this vertically, video is clearly not my forté).

TAT Live Wallpapers

TAT's live wallpapers also employ the use of Android's accelerometer as you can see in the video below. When you tilt the phone, the trees sway, for example. Other elements on the screen are interactive and respond to touches.

Founded Choon-Hong Peck, former Director of Engineering at video platform Brightcove, Thingbuzz launches today with free accounts and will offer premium accounts with further customization soon. The company says its interface was inspired by the related articles fly-in on The New York Times site, and the similarities are clear. I expect this is a widget that many site owners will be interested in using. It will be all the more appealing once a few key problems with the service are solved.

Above, you can see what the Thingbuzz pop-up looks like when users click on it. By default it is closed and only shows sharing options, but users can change that. The styling can be overwritten by a site's own stylesheet. I haven't tested that yet, but I hope it's easy to make substantial changes - the widget is too small by default and the messages shown are too buried to be seen regularly.

Premium account holders can perform a variety of sophisticated functions, like sticking certain messages at the top of the list regardless of what new messages come through. The widget on each page will display the 40 most recent messages. By default only messages deemed positive by the Thingbuzz sentiment analysis engine will be shown, but that's a setting that can be changed as well.

The biggest problem I see with the service is the lack of quality control on the messages. This may not be as big an issue for sites that publish less content than ReadWriteWeb, but Twitter is filled with pointless automated messages republishing our content. I suggested to Thingbuzz that the company add blocking automated Tweets published through Twitterfeed to its spam algorithm. Right now, clicking through the messages that appear in the Thingbuzz widget on ReadWriteWeb, most of the messages that are served up are pretty boring. The Tweet posted above, for example, is positive but doesn't add much to our site. In fact, I think it detracts from the overall professional tone we try to keep here.

The idea is great, though, and if the selection algorithm can be fine-tuned, I think website publishers will love it.

Could this be the start of something more? It's not hard to imagine widgets in the Twitter sidebar from other services, like presentation decks from SlideShare or PDFs from Scribd, for example.

The Kiva widget is very simple; it doesn't include any javascript or other means of rich functionality, but it's hard not to wonder when such options will become available for this valuable real-estate.

Who else is included right now? We don't know - but the potential to go beyond 140 characters and into the land of interactivity and programatic functionality inside the multi-media space on Twitter.com is substantial. People have long said that Twitter is a platform, but apps built off-site may have had a smaller impact on the large Twitter community than have, for example, the apps built on the Facebook platform and usable right on that site.

What apps are next in that sidebar? Let's guess. Casual games would work well and have long been expected to land in Twitter somehow. VOIP click to call could be cool. Live video broadcasting? There's as much potential as there are app companies that can work in a small portion of a web page. Hopefully that will prove wildly valuable to this first, social good-oriented, widget publisher.

Update: Twitter has been criticized for its needlessly closed approach to widgets in the sidebar. When the new version of Twitter was launched, long-time blogger Anil Dash wrote the following:

In its current implementation, Twitter has declared that media which is shown within the Twitter interface comes from selected partners. But actually, the technology to allow embedding of rich media from almost any site already exists, using a system called OEmbed. Geeky stuff, but it's made by nice people who are pretty smart, and it lets any site say, "Hey, if you want to put our thing in your thing, do it like this". It works. Lots of sites do it.

Nobody's getting rich off of it, but nobody's getting sued, and in between those two extremes lies most of what makes the web great.

Now that Twitter is talking-up its inclusion of widgets from organizations like Kiva, perhaps its a good time to revisit the question of standards and accessible platforms.

I think this move by Facebook is a great shame, because it's very relevant social content and boxes display it for longer on your Facebook profile. In case you missed it first time round, here's what this move by Facebook means to you...

Facebook quietly announced in November that it planned to deprecate boxes on a user's profile.

The replacement will be something called application tabs, which are similar to tabs in your browser. They're new pages specifically devoted to third-party content.

The problem I have with this is that it removes the content off a user's Facebook profile page. OK, the content may feature on a user's profile for a day or two as part of their daily real-time stream of information. But soon it will scroll off the profile page. An example is this movie review I did of Inception, on the media aggregation site GetGlue.

That review lasted on my profile page for at most a couple of days. I don't go to the movies that often, but the movies I do go to say something about my likes. It's social information, because I'd like to share my thoughts on movies and know what my friends think of certain movies. So I feel that it's relevant content to persist on my profile page - at least for a couple of weeks, rather than a couple of days. If I had a GetGlue box on Facebook, then my friends could see that I went to and enjoyed Inception - even if they visit my page a week after I saw the movie.

Now, with application tabs replacing boxes, I'll have to rely on my friends clicking a "GetGlue tab" on my Facebook page. How likely is that? Not very. I myself very rarely click my friends tabs.

I should add that tabs will have their uses. For example I look forward to adding a tab to my profile for the ReadWriteWeb Facebook Page. That shows that the Page is somehow related to me and so people may (or may not) be curious enough to click the tab. But for more social type content - like my books, movies, music - it makes more sense to display it on my profile page using a widget/box.

Why is Facebook Making This Change?

Facebook's move from boxes to tabs seems to mimic the functionality of a web browser, like Firefox or Chrome. Perhaps Facebook sees itself as a platform for the rest of the Web's content, which was partly Google's motivation for creating Chrome.

There has been talk that Facebook wants to avoid what happened to MySpace - which became overrun with garish, animated third party widgets. But Facebook already had solid rules in place to avoid animated GIFs and other ugly third party content that plagued MySpace. So I don't buy that argument.

I think the real reason is that Facebook doesn't want third party content to become too important a part of a user's Facebook profile page. For example it doesn't want users to prominently display Twitter content on their profiles, because it wants users to enter status updates within Facebook itself.

I also think that Facebook is putting too much emphasis on the real-time firehose. Third party content boxes were a great way for users to choose to display - in a more persistent manner - relevant, contextual content about themselves. But now that content is being relegated to tabs, where it simply won't be seen most of the time.

What do you think - am I over-reacting to this decision by Facebook to remove boxes and replace them with tabs? Or do you agree that Facebook is making third party social content less persistent and accessible with this move?

This is a great shame, because it's very relevant social content and boxes display it for longer on your Facebook profile. So essentially, with this move Facebook is relegating the importance of both third party content and persistent content.

Facebook quietly announced in November that it planned to deprecate boxes on a user's profile. Last month the company noted on its Developer blog that "we are no longer supporting boxes on Profiles and Pages and encourage developers to use application tabs instead." Facebook users began to report the removal of their profile boxes in July - and many weren't happy about it.

The replacement, application tabs, are similar to tabs in your browser. They're new pages specifically devoted to third-party content. The problem I have with this is that it removes the content off a user's Facebook profile page. OK, the content may feature on a user's profile for a day or two as part of their daily real-time stream of information. But soon it will scroll off the profile page. An example is this movie review I did of Inception, on the media aggregation site GetGlue.

That review lasted on my profile page for at most a couple of days. I don't go to the movies that often, but the movies I do go to say something about my likes. It's social information, because I'd like to share my thoughts on movies and know what my friends think of certain movies. So I feel that it's relevant content to persist on my profile page - at least for a couple of weeks, rather than a couple of days. If I had a GetGlue box on Facebook, then my friends could see that I went to and enjoyed Inception - even if they visit my page a week after I saw the movie.

Instead, if the plan to replace profile page boxes with application tabs goes ahead, I'll have to rely on my friends clicking a "GetGlue tab" on my Facebook page. How likely is that? Not very. I myself very rarely click my friends tabs.

I should add that tabs will have their uses. For example I look forward to adding a tab to my profile for the ReadWriteWeb Facebook Page. That shows that the Page is somehow related to me and so people may (or may not) be curious enough to click the tab. But for more social type content - like my books, movies, music - it makes more sense to display it on my profile page using a widget/box.

Why is Facebook Making This Change?

Facebook's move from boxes to tabs seems to mimic the functionality of a web browser, like Firefox or Chrome. Perhaps Facebook sees itself as a platform for the rest of the Web's content, which was partly Google's motivation for creating Chrome.

There has been talk that Facebook wants to avoid what happened to MySpace - which became overrun with garish, animated third party widgets. But Facebook already had solid rules in place to avoid animated GIFs and other ugly third party content that plagued MySpace. So I don't buy that argument.

I think the real reason is that Facebook doesn't want third party content to become too important a part of a user's Facebook profile page. For example it doesn't want users to prominently display Twitter content on their profiles, because it wants users to enter status updates within Facebook itself.

I also think that Facebook is putting too much emphasis on the real-time firehose. Third party content boxes were a great way for users to choose to display - in a more persistent manner - relevant, contextual content about themselves. But now that content is being relegated to tabs, where it simply won't be seen most of the time.

What do you think - am I over-reacting to this decision by Facebook to remove boxes and replace them with tabs? Or do you agree that Facebook is making third party social content less persistent and accessible with this move?

As Wolfram Alpha's product manager Schoeller Porter and managing director Barak Berkowitz told us last week, making the service as ubiquitous as possible is currently the main mission for the Wolfram Alpha team. The recent pricing change for the iPhone app and launch of Wolfram's iPad app were some of the first steps in this direction (sales for the iPhone app increased by over 100x after the price drop). Now that more users are aware of the service, getting the API into developers' hands is the next step in the company's march towards ubiquity, with the widget builder being the first step in this direction.

Building Widgets

We were able to preview the application over the last few days. What makes it stand out from similar products is how easy the company has managed to make the creation process. To get started, you simply perform a regular Wolfram Alpha query. From there, you choose which parts of your query should become variables in your widget.

If you are trying to build a widget that compares the cost of living in different cities, for example, you start with a query like "cost of living New York Boston." Then you highlight the name of the cities and declare them as variables. In the next step, the layout editor, you can then add additional text, choose the color of your widget and add additional choices to your widget's popup menus. In the following steps, you can select which part of Wolfram Alpha's results will appear in your final widget and choose the form in which the results will appear on your site (iFrame, lightbox or popup).

During the beta phase, you will have to publish your widget to Wolfram Alpha's widget gallery (under a Creative Commons license) before you can embed it. If you find an interesting widget in this gallery, you can also modify and re-purpose it.

Simple and Straightforward

According to Wolfram's Schoeller Porter, the philosophy behind building the service was to make creating these widgets "as simple and straightforward to build and embed as possible." Judging from our experience with the application, Wolfram succeeded in this while still giving users access to a lot of Wolfram Alpha's power without giving up too much flexibility for the sake of simplicity.

Wolfram on Wikipedia?

The app makes it easy for users to embed their newly created widgets on most of the popular blogging platforms, including Wordpress and Blogger. In addition, the service also offers the ability to export a special embed code for MediaWiki-powered sites. The most popular of these, of course, is Wikipedia. While we weren't able to get much information about this from the Wolfram Alpha team, it seems like there have been some discussions between Wolfram and Wikipedia about possibly integrating some of Wolfram Alpha's capabilities into Wikipedia articles. Wolfram Alpha already features links to Wikipedia in its results pages.

Built with standards like HTML, CSS and JavaScript, the widgets are easy for web developers to create since they don't require knowing a vendor-specific technology in order to do so.

That change to browser distribution technology now applies to the Opera Widgets too. Already, there are hundreds of widgets available in Opera's online gallery, including everything from games to media players plus widgets for accessing Facebook, Twitter and more. 

However, it appears that these widgets for mobile aren't being offered directly to consumers in the way that the company's web browser widgets are. Instead, Opera intends to provide their widget lineup to operators and handset manufacturers who can then choose which widgets they want to include with their phones. Interested businesses are asked to request more info here: http://www.opera.com/business.

In other words, just because these widgets are built with "open web standards," it doesn't mean you can just start installing them on your iPhone right now.

Widgets: Apps for Feature Phones?

That's OK, though - the company probably doesn't intend for that to happen anyway. The Opera mobile browsers have become popular alternatives to the basic browsers included on many of today's "feature phones" because they speed up browsing by proxying access to the web through Opera's servers while also offering some advanced options like pinch-and-zoom and tabbed browsing. For feature phones, the Opera browser can offer a better web surfing experience, but on today's smartphones, the built-in browser is usually just as good (if not better) and doesn't have to rely on proxies for fast web access.

Similarly, the new mobile widgets are likely intended to be the speedy apps missing from most feature phones - phones which, unlike the iPhone and Android devices, don't have their own built-in "App Stores." By providing carriers and manufacturers access to the Opera widget lineup, now even the most basic phones can tout some of the same features that modern smartphones do ("access Facebook with an app!," "update Twitter on the go!"). Whether or not any businesses go for these new widgets still remains to be seen.

When we looked at the rebirth of the Web TV last year, we had one major reservation - would people really buy a new TV just for the widgets? "Probably not," we said. This year, Yahoo! is bringing the Internet into our other devices, so we don't have to.

According to the press release, new deals with MIPS, Sigma Designs and ViewSonic will enable Yahoo! Widgets to be embedded not only in Internet-connected TVs, but in a number of other devices, such as media players, "Blu-ray players, network players, AV receivers, and cable/IPTV set-top boxes." This is a big move because, while we may not want to replace our widescreen TV, we might be in the market for a Blu-ray player.

Today's announcement also highlighted deals with a number of new content providers, including Showtime, CNBC, Napster, The Weather Channel and more. But do we really need The Weather Channel widget when we can have just The Weather Channel, itself? Maybe. Maybe not. But the company's release of its widget development kit to the general public might open the doors to some interesting new widgets.

Cory Pforzheimer, a spokesperson for Yahoo!, told us earlier today that keeping the WDK private was an issue of working together with TV manufacturers and software developers.

"TV manufacturers weren't really used to updating after they sent out their units. There's no such thing as a beta on a TV," he said. "The last thing Samsung wants is calls when someone's Facebook widget doesn't work."

The combination of affordability and potential for innovation here could be just enough to bring the Web back to the TV through the side door.

To test the product visit netvibes.com.

This new feature is not just a simple productivity enhancement or advertisement. The icons are there to indicate which messages include "enhanced content" - real-time updates within the body of the email messages, from companies sending the emails.

Apparently this feature has been in the works for some time, at least according to the timestamp on the Google Help explanation about "enhanced content," which shows its last update was in July of this year. The explanation reads:

If you're subscribed to receive email from certain senders, the messages you receive from them will be enhanced with an interactive gadget that has up-to-date content from their website (you'll also see an icon in your inbox identifying these messages).

For example, if you receive a Pregnancy Bulletin newsletter from Babycenter, you'll be able to view up-to-date content, including the baby name of the day, and browse though the current top 100 baby names within the message. Aside from the convenience of being able to interact with certain websites from inside Gmail, the branded content will help identify that your messages are legitimate and not spoofed (we'll only show branded content when the sender authenticates their mail). We're currently testing this with a small number of senders and will decide whether to make it widely available based on user and partner feedback.

A Marketer's Dream

Real-time content updates within Gmail messages sound like a great idea as long as it doesn't slow down the loading of the message, replying, forwarding and the like. Just imagine the possibilities! In the enhanced Netflix emails, for example, you not only view your recent recommendations - you can actually add them to your queue right from within the message itself.

This sort of interactivity is sure to be an email marketer's dream as it allows for whole new levels of user engagement with the brand. Instead of simply dismissing the email with a click of the "delete" button, recipients might find themselves actually taking the time to read through what were once thought of as "throwaway" messages. In this information-overloaded era where out-of-control inboxes have many email users declaring email bankruptcy, doing mass deletes, and filtering all non-personal email to other folders, any extra incentive to not delete or ignore an email is a feature which marketers are sure to take notice of.

But a little in-email interactivity may only be scratching the surface of what this enhanced content makes possible. What could come next? Perhaps you'll soon be able to make purchases without ever leaving the confines of your inbox? As McGee writes in his post - wait until Amazon gets on board with that idea - our wallets are sure to take a beating!

One quarter of those surveyed who reverted back to Firefox 2 cited privacy as their biggest issue with Firefox 3. In an effort to curb privacy fears, Firefox 3.5 allows for private browsing, the ability to clear a portion of the history and website blocking to stop certain websites from appearing in browser history.

If Mozilla's little location bar raised this much attention, imagine the barriers facing shared browsing services and history trackers. Skabble, Hooeey and Me.dium (Now OneRiot) must have faced enormous scrutiny around user privacy. It's interesting to see privacy become an issue with browsing habits while in other areas we allow so much of our private lives to trickle into the ether.

At the very least, the service represents a good first step in bringing the web to the TV without losing that essential "TV experience" which has more to do with passively holding a remote than it does with actively typing onto a keyboard. That psychological barrier between participation levels involved in surfing the net and watching TV is probably what led early internet-enabled TV experiences to fail...like "Web TV" for example. People just don't want keyboards in the living room. Verizon seems to understand our need for more passive interaction and has made nearly everything about their web-enabled TV service easy to perform with the Verizon FiOS remote control.

Hands-On: Facebook on the TV

First things first. Before you can have any fun with the Widget Bazaar, you have to configure a parental control password. This may seem a bit odd, but it's understandable given some of the Twitter hashtags we've seen become trending topics lately. To set up the parental control passcode, you have to delve into settings. It's not really that difficult and the process was complete in a matter of moments.

Now you can enter your new passcode to access the Facebook widget, but before you begin you still have to scroll through pages and pages of an end-user agreement and select "I agree" at the end.

Once you're past these initial setup configurations, you can proceed with logging into your Facebook account. The Facebook widget only appears on one half of your screen, so you can play around with it while still continuing to watch whatever program you have on.

On the next screen, you're presented with boxes to enter in your Facebook email address and password. There's a handy option to "Remember Me" so you don't have to re-enter your email each time. You're also prompted to set up an optional numeric passcode which you can use in the future in lieu of entering in your password. I recommend doing so - pushing numbers on your remote is a lot easier and faster than using that on-screen keyboard.

Once logged in, your new Facebook sidebar appears with your current program still playing to the right. There's an option at the top to "switch user" which will probably introduce a whole new way to fight over the remote control (it's my turn on Facebook!). The first option - the one to view your "Profile" - is actually quite boring. It just displays your current profile photo and status, two things you probably don't need to see. Unfortunately, there's no way to use the on-screen keyboard to post a custom status update from within this area.

Both the "Friends - Status Updates" and the "All Friends" section looked exactly the same to me. I thought the "All Friends" section would be more like the News Feed (so-and-so posted a photo, so-and-so requested help in Mafia Wars), but that didn't appear to be the case. It's possible that all my friends were just surprisingly inactive on Facebook at the time I launched this section, but I'm not so sure. In any event, both sections looked exactly the same: a list of friends and their status messages.

The "Albums" section was particularly fun and probably the most useful of all the options. Here, you can launch a list of your Facebook photo albums and then scroll through the pictures they contained in a slideshow-like format. Another tap on the "OK" button would launch the pictures full-screen.

Finally, the best part: updating your Facebook status. An option at the bottom allows you to update your status with a pre-configured message that says what show your watching. Although I still wish that I could customize my message, this simple, one-button post option is a great feature to have.

Hands-On: Twitter on the TV

Before you can start using the Twitter widget, you have to agree yet again to another Terms of Service. Besides the typical lawyerly stuff you'd expect to see, there was an interesting section that pointed you to www22.verizon.com/terms to read more about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act for info on how to contact Verizon with claims. There was also a section that informed you how to report child pornography posted to Twitter. (I wasn't even aware that Twitter had that problem, but I guess Verizon's lawyers were just covering all their bases).

Unlike with Facebook, you don't configure your own Twitter account within this widget. That means you can't see your replies, direct messages or your friends' timeline. In other words, this widget isn't a Twitter client. That's disappointing because I'd like to be able to tweet from my TV...at the very least I think you should have the same option as in Facebook to tweet what you're watching. Sadly, that's not the case.

Instead, the Verizon Twitter widget provides more of a read-only experience. You can check out a list of the latest trends and see the related tweets, perform keyword-based searches, or even configure "favorite topics" for custom saved searches of your own. (Hint: set up a favorite search for your Twitter username to keep track of replies).

The interface to all these options looks the same: tweets on the right, TV show playing on the left - just like with the Facebook widget. The tweets don't update automatically, but you can press "OK" on your remote to refresh them. You can also scroll up and down through the list to see more.

The absolute coolest option within the Twitter widget is its ability to display tweets about the current show. In my case, I was watching "Pan's Labyrinth" on HBO (which is, by the way, an odd but interesting tale). Surprisingly, there were a few others tweeting about this movie, too. Of course, had I been watching something more common - like American Idol for instance - there surely would have been tons more tweets to see. The only problem with the way these tweets are displayed is the lack of a timestamp. I really don't know if these folks were watching Pan's Labyrinth with me right now or if they were watching it sometime in the past.

Conclusion

Overall, I'm thrilled to have this sort of functionality on my TV, but I'd like to see a few improvements. I'd like the option to make the Twitter widget more of a client so I can tweet an opinion about what I'm watching or at least that I'm watching something. Although the on-screen keyboard is cumbersome and slow, what better way to kill time in between commercials? I'd also like to type in custom Facebook status messages in the same way.

The only other major complaint was speed. There was a bit of a delay when scrolling through photos in my album, for example, and hitting the scroll button again and again only led to the selection moving way too far ahead of where I wanted to go. I should have known better than to keep mashing it, but with TVs, you expect instant reactions. Channel Up changes the channel immediately, for example, without any delay.

Also, when viewing tweets, scrolling up and down through the list did a weird refresh of the entire screen which was distracting. I didn't see the same type of refresh when scrolling through Facebook updates, so it seems like something is really off there. Perhaps the widget also doing a search to look for more current updates...I'm not sure. In any event, it needs to be fixed.

But at the end of the day, despite these issues, having Facebook and Twitter on my TV is truly incredible.

Oh, I should also mention that the Widget Bazaar introduces two other widgets: Sudoku and ESPN Fantasy Sports. More widgets will launch in the future. I've only included a selection of images in this post, for all the photos from my TV, you can visit the online album here.

When adding the gadgets to iGoogle or Gmail, you won't have to enter in your Zoho account information in order to access your Zoho data. That's thanks to the oAuth support built in. In order to add a custom gadget to Gmail, you must first turn on a particular setting in labs which allows for this (Enable "Add any gadget by URL" in Labs).

Note: To learn more about custom Gmail gadgets, go here.

In social networks like Facebook and Orkut, the gadgets function more like applications. Once you click the link on the Gadgets page to add them to your profile, you'll be taken to a page where you'll need to enter in your account information before they will appear in your Applications list.

Finally, for OpenSocial compatible networks and applications, a link to an XML file is provided and for anywhere else you need a gadget, there's a generic embed code that can be used.

For anyone thinking of making the switch from Google Docs or Gmail over to the Zoho Suite, gadgets like these can make the transition easier as you'll be able to keep up with what's new even when you're still in your Google applications. And for those of us who spend entirely too much time in social networks, having these gadgets on hand means we won't miss out on the important information that matters most.

Now head over to the "Gadgets" section in Settings. For any of the gadgets listed below, all you have to do is enter in (or even better, copy and paste) the gadget URL provided into the box. Click "Add" and you're finished!

Twitter Gadget

The Twitter Gadget is a recent favorite of ours. Once installed, it provides a box where you can update your status, check your friends' timeline, read your replies and direct messages, and view your favorites.

Gadget URL: http://www.twittergadget.com/gadget_gmail.xml

Google Map Search

Need to look up an address which was just emailed to you? The Google Map Search lets you do so without having to leave Gmail. Just enter the location in the box provided and click "Search."

Gadget URL: http://www.google.com/ig/modules/mapsearch.xml

Facebook Gadget

Can't get enough Facebook and aren't up to installing the Xoopit Gmail plugin? Another option is the Facebook gadget which lets you get your latest Facebook notifications, check on your friends' updates, view photos, and even perform Facebook searches right within the gadget itself. The first time you install it, you'll have to authenticate with Facebook to give the gadget permission to access your account.

Gadget URL: http://www.brianngo.net/ig/facebook.xml

FriendFeed Gadget

If you're more of a FriendFeeder than Facebooker (or maybe you're both), another gadget you'll probably like is the FriendFeed gadget. This one is a Google Gadget repurposed for Gmail and it just displays your Home Feed, nothing more. There are no settings to customize and the layout hasn't been configured specifically for the small size of the Gmail sidebar. However, it is scrollable and you can "like" and comment within the gadget. If you need your FriendFeed everywhere, it's not a bad option.

Gadget URL: http://friendfeed.com/embed/googlegadget/spec

Digg Gadget

The Digg gadget lets you check out Digg's top stories within your Gmail sidebar. You can choose to just see News, Videos, or Images, or you can view all the stories. You can also use the drop-down box to pick which sub-section of stories you're interested in seeing (Technology, Politics, Science, Gaming, etc.). If you scroll over to the right, the gadget lets you access your friends list and your settings, which is, by the way, the area where you'll need to enter in your Digg username.

Gadget URL: http://digg.com/goog/ig.xml

Honorable Mentions

Here are a few other gadgets you may find of use. These aren't our personal favorites, but perhaps they will be yours:

World Clock: http://gad.getpla.net/poly/clock.xml

Google Translate: http://www.google.com/ig/modules/dictionary.xml

Ask a Word (Dictionary, Thesaurus, Encyclopedia): http://www.openinventions.com/spellcheck/openinventions_spellcheck.xml

Delicious Gadget: http://www.labpixies.com/campaigns/delicious/delicious.xml

MySpace Gadget: http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/100080069921643878012/myspace.xml

Flickr Gadget: http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/100080069921643878012/flickr.xml

Remember the Milk (Task List): http://www.rememberthemilk.com/services/modules/googleig/rtm.xml

Bit.ly URL Shortner: http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/107368512201818821991/bitly-shortener.xml

Orkut Scrapbook: http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/105297062528314471242/doomer_orkut_scrapbook.xml

Wikipedia Search: http://www.google.com/ig/modules/wikipedia.xml

Google Calculator: http://calebegg.com/calc.xm

Currency Converter: http://www.ac-markets.com/forex/currencyconverter.xml

Quick Links to Google Services: http://blakewest.googlepages.com/googleservices.xml

Gmail supports iGoogle gadgets, too, so you can actually add any gadget you want. Just find your favorite gadget, click the "share this gadget" option, and then copy the URL that ends with ".xml." However, be aware that not all gadgets will look good when smashed into the Gmail sidebar.