netvibes - (re)mix the web

As you might have noticed by now, we like to take advantage of recent submissions to Ecosystem in order to spotlight one particular use of widgets in general, or of UWA in particular. The point being to show the wide array of possibilities that a widget or a Netvibes tab can have.

This is especially the case with today’s find. Let me present you 4 widgets from FXstreet.com. Here they are, with their accompanying descriptions:
- Euro Forex Rates: Euro crosses real-time forex rates
- U.S. Dollar Forex Rates: U.S. Dollar crosses real-time forex rates
- Interest Rates: Main world interest rates table
- Economic Calendar: Economic calendar main events

Most of you, dear readers of this UWA developers blog, probably went ZzzZZzzZz upon reading those widgets descriptions or seeing that Windows Vista screencap, but keep in mind that not all Netvibes users are techno-geeks. Some are, simply addicted to finance, or plain simply using their Netvibes private page as a dashboard of all financial activities out there.

Simple proof: the number of results you get from Ecosystem when looking for “finance”: 566, among which 44 are applications (which means: MiniAPI modules, UWA widgets, or Flash apps). Indeed, Ecosystem’s Economy category has a hefty load of items. If you dive a little bit into these results, you might even stumble upon a real treasure chest: a whole lot of widgets from InfoNgen.com, a Netvibes-like website dedicated to financial news, who where kind enough to replicate most of the own widgets in UWA for general consumption…

As you know now, there’s a lot of options for those wanting to keep up-to-date with financial news. That’s because there’s a need out there for more than Flash games and YouTube best-ofs: real-life useful apps that let’s the user combine many feeds of data into one easily update screen.

Finances might one application of that, but there are surely more. If as a UWA developer you are looking for new widget ideas to fulful someone’s need, you simply have to think out of your own “box of needs” and brainstorm what someone else, working in a completely different field, might want to get updates on on a hourly/daily/weekly basis. If you can think of one, it might just be what another Netvibes user is in dire need of right now. Go ahead, make his day - and don’t forget to submit on Ecosystem, the best way to get your widgets to be available on all the UWA-supported platforms!

If really you feel stuck, don’t forget the Widget wishlist forum. Likewise, if you have an idea but don’t know how to build it, the UWA developer request forum is here for you.

Tags: finance, Showcase, widget

This entry was posted on Monday, November 12th, 2007 at 6:17 pm and is filed under Articles, Showcase. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.