Campaign Widget: Nature Conservancy

I grabbed this from here- http://support.nature.org/site/PageServer?pagename=index_pbt

Thoughts:
Nice picture and good idea but not clear what the user is meant to do.
How it works: If youclick anywhere on the widget it will take you to a donationpage. I assume once a donation is made the widget updates showing that I am x amount closer to my goal.

What's mising:
The clear call to action: "click here to donate"
The ability to Grab the Widget from here. Perhaps that functionailty appears aftear one donates but that is lame.

Making my own widget on widgetbox.com

Well Charlotte, I dont know how closely you are checking out this blog. But, I just added a new widget. A Blidget. A blog widget. Where the purpose of the widget is to actually show the posts inthis blog. I posted it in the sidebar.
Why? I was curious to see what happened on widgetbox.com when I made a widget. And the result was that I created the widget and the site translated it so that I could choose to post it anywhere and either an installation window would pop up or new code would be generated.
I used their tool to create the widget so that may be why it was able to translate the widget so that it could be installed onto a variety of platforms. I didnt really CREATE a widget, I customized a blidget made by widgetbox using my own rss feed.
I am stll not sure what hapens when you enter code from scratch- as in create your own widget. Does Widgetbox magically translate that too?

Build your own widget WYSIWYG style

Sproutbuilder
Fascinating little tool. Somehow my 30 day trial ran out... even though I started my sprout a decade ago and just reactivated about a week or two ago. That's ok.
Anyway. It was cool but it overloaded my little old computer.
What is it?
"Sprout Builder is a web-hosted, visual authoring solution that allows creative professionals to quickly and easily create branded, rich-media content and widgets. "

Someone on the team needs to play with it. They have a subscription model.
Oh interesting I found an old test of Beth Kanter's and it has both sprout and gigya built in. I will try to post it to the sidebar. Check out the post it is pretty interesting- as is the norm for her. I find her blog to be an endless supply of information around nptech.

And Other Widget Builders:
Gigya- "

Gigya provides widget developers with free tools to help distribute and track their widgets. Our technology is the developer’s choice, used by more than 1,000 widget developers.

"We also offer companies using our Wildfire sharing technology the opportunity to generate additional revenue by choosing to take part in our widget advertising and distribution network."

I have a whitepaper from them

Kickapps




PS Godaddy.com and kickapps join forces.

Microsoft Popfly: Mostly game type widgets

Widget Gallery:
Widgetbox- Gallery of widgets searchable and tagged.

Zembly - described onthe Sun Microsystems blog 'Zembly is an application developing environment that is best described (by zembly developers) as "kind of like a wiki, but for applications," because it includes the power of the crowd. "

Causecast widget

Loking at the Causecast widget. But first, before I forget- I noticed they take donations on their site with no outside help. No verisign anything on their form too. Must remember to check in with them and see if that's been cool withtheir donors or if there is concern about security? The Causecast peeps are supercool and I love what they are doign.I hope they win the Webby.

Anyway. The widget.
Waaaaaay down on the home page it says get a badge. And badges are buttons. But there is also a widget. Hooray!

Fast forward 30 minutes:
The widget shows up as a long column of BLANK.
I'll leave it so you can see the column of nothing. But here is the link so I can lok at it with the team and try again if they are into it. http://www.savethechildren.causecast.org/widget?badge

Firstgiving review

Compared to N4G Firstgiving has the added functionality of "sponsor me to do X so I can raise money for Y." Yay them. A smart set up. Sometimes I wonder if peeps aren't more willing to give money in order to see people they know do something heroic, stupid or humiliating than they are to giving a wide-eyed Filipina- for example (oh you know the commercial) child with dirt on her face and one flip flop. They'll definitely feel for said one-shoe wee one. But I'd bet cash money (or rather coin money- I am poor, and semi Filipina, and I also in fact, cannot find my other flip flop)- esp in these trying times, the wallet may come out more for the friend doing the deed more than for the kid in need. Almost as a way of paying your pal for doing SOMETHING, damn it. I digress.

I couldn't figure out how to get a widget from an event. But there is a whole event setup like all Boston Marathon runners running for Oxfam know where to go on the site to all create the same Oxfam/Marathon branded page and then from that page I imagine it is the same process as below. I think the orgs are responsible for that.

How it works.
You design a page. You pick your charity and explain stuff. You get to add flickr and youtube and jpg and it's easy. Here's mine. http://www.firstgiving.com/mahachehlaoui

Once you make the page you can:
Email peeps. According to the site "It's the most important part of your fundraising." You can enter many manually or add from address book and you can customize your message.

Post in Facebook. My page is an embarrassment I won't.

Pro's
The badge is easy to create.
Metrics 101- you can see who gave: Log-in to your account to see a full list of everyone who's made a contribution to your page (including anonymous donors), and their personal messages for you"
So cool that you can have team pages. Can you have team widgets? I would want two thermometers one on how the team is doing and one on how my own personal fundraising for the team is going. Ie team goal and my goal.

Cons
But if you change your mind on charities I think you have to start over. That's kind of annoying.
The widget doesn't support the Youtube or the Flickr. Pourquoi Firstgiving?
The charity's name doesn't show up in the widget you have to click to see it. Lame. I guess I coulda made it my title but still. Downer.

PS this site calls the widget a widget and not a badge. Solid, FirstGiving- seriously, way to go. But they do use the term badge, and with it they mean button. What's up online charity world? Why couldn't you just use the same words as everyone else? Badges? Et, tu Blogger. "Add a GADGET?"

Network for Good Charity Badge

Also a widget. I had trouble getting this into myspace so I am trying it here. Blogger is very widget friendly. Wordpress does not support java/flash widgets. I wish they would say that flat out when you ar trying to add widgets. I guess it says add html - but hell I only learned the diff recently. It's all greek to me.

Anyway Network for Good is a very easy badget to make. You choose a jpg, and a video to link to- it does not play in the badge though I don't think. Then you choose your charity and since they are linked in to guidestar it is a very easy process.

Simple to add.

As a user of the widget, the link to view the video was hard toclick on.
When you lick to donate you are brought to the MJ Fox Foundation Page within N4G.
I don't know if there are any donations where you actually enter your info INTO the widget and don't get brought to an external page.... My guess is that most people would prolly still feel safe being brought to a verisign type page... I don't know. What do you think?

Testing Widgets: Giveback

This blog is where I will be playing around with different widgets and trying stuff out for call2action.
The first widget I added is:

Giveback's Take Action Widget
"You inspire people to make a difference, we'll show them what to do."

The Take Action Widget allows you to turn your web content into a powerful force for positive change. Just add this widget to your website or blog and instantly viewers will see opportunities they have to take action on the issues you care most about."

When grabbing the widget from their site you are given the option to put in key words for the widget to scan your page for. First I didn't put any in, and the widget just had random cause s in tehre- one in spanish and one about saving the animals.

Now I have put in one for water and am going to paste the blog post from the C2A blog re charity: water in this posting and see if it affects the widget.

"As the benefactor of this year’s Twestival, charity: water received over $250,000 from events held in over 125 cities. Just two months later, founder Scott Harrison and his team have already started digging wells in Northern Ethiopia. And they are letting the people who partied and gave know all about it. This is something donors love, that many organizations do relatively little of- the post-party follow up!

Progress on the project was parceled out in four simple videos. Although they are named Day 1, Day 2, Day 3 and Day 4, the content is so much more than a feelgood journal."

Now I will copy and paste some content here that matches the terms I put in when I