How to Create a Labels Cloud Widget for Blogger / Blogspot

Labels cloud, also known as Tags cloud is a widget that sums up all your blogger / blogspot blog labels and displays with style. By default blogger blog shows the list of labels in one column and if you have a lots of labels, the list goes really long. But, labels cloud add style to it, highlights the important labels and gives less importance to labels with minimal posts, with the freedom to remove label number counts. This is useful for both, blogs having lots of posts with labels or blogs having less no of posts with few labels. Check out the below screenshots.

This is how labels cloud will look in blogger blogs having less posts.

If you are having large number of posts with lots of labels, labels cloud widget will look this in your blogger/blogspot blog.

How to add Labels Cloud or Tags Cloud widget to your Blogger / Blogspot blog Here

Top 10 Blogspot (Blogger) Widgets and Addons

• Whos.amung.us – Really great addon for your Bloggspot blog for sure. With it, you can easily see live visitor statistics for your blog in real time. Using some advantage technology and features. Widget customization supported.
• Digg Widget – You can easily display the latest Digg news on your site by adding a Digg Widget, now with more choices for what to show and how it’s displayed. Very useful and effective widget for your blog!
• Feedjit – One more live traffic widget for your blog. Allowing more informations about your visitors with live source links in it. If you don’t like first one, this widget would be great replacement!
• iBegin Weather – Very graphically cool widget that displays real time weather in your blog sidebar. Only bad think that they supports only USA or Canada cities! Hope to see more in the future!
• Snow Effect for Blogger – Here is a simple snow effect widget which you can add to your Blogger powered blog in just one click! This widget does not use images to generate the snow effect: instead it uses plain white text! Very cool widget to put during holiday time on your blog!
• Blogumus – Flash animated label cloud for Blogger! Very cool addon which uses scripts converted from Roy Tanck’s WP Cumulus plugin for Wordpress. I have to say that this widget works great! And you should try it!
• IntenseDebate – Great addon which will improve functionality of your Blogger comments form. Allowing you to easily improve your comments with advanced features and options! Recommended install!
• Twitter Badge – This badge allows you to display your latest tweets on your Blogger powered blog sidebar! Really cool widget if you use Twitter! Also, it’s good to get you some more potential followers!
• Popular (Most Commented) Posts – This widget uses your blog’s comment feed to determine the most popular posts based on the number of comments each post has received. Very nice widget for your Blogspot blog!
• Random Post Widget – Add random post functionality to your Blogger powered blog with this great widget. The widget can be placed anywhere a widget will go. Very cool widget for your blog for sure!

Blogger Buddy

Version 1.0
Publisher: Incomps_Creations
Platform: Sidebar Gadgets (Windows)

Blogger Buddy allows you to easily view and post to your blogs on Blogger.com

Download

Share your entire 2.0 universe in one widget

Web 2.0 has spread us out all over the galaxy.

We have our Digg account, our Technorati account, we are in Facebook, Bebo, Reddit, del.icio.us, Netvibes, Blogs and on and on and on …

How do we keep track of it all? Well, one cool way would be to have a simple all-in-one widget that lists our 2.0 universe. You’d click one site in the list and there you go.

This is where the ShareYourself widget by Dustin Bachrach comes in. It does all of this PLUS your friends can see it and use it wherever you choose to put it.

Check out this list of where you can upload this widget: MySpace, Friendster, Facebook, Orkut, Bebo, Tagged, Blogger, hi5, Live Space, Piczo, Freewebs, LiveJournal, BlackPlanet, myYearbook, WordPress, Vox, TypePad, Xanga, Multiply, iGoogle, Netvibes Pageflakes, MiGente, OR embed (copy/paste) the code wherever you want. That list is SWEET!

And bloggers- here’s another way you can have your readers check you out and connect with you in other places.
Pros:

• Installs in a breeze
• Can include more than 20 of your 2.0 links, including your blog
• Can add your own customized 2.0 link, if it’s not in the list
• Can upload your widget to more than 20 social sites.
• Only one small, unobtrusive share link at the bottom

Cons:

• Embeddable code is large
• Links open in same window, not a new window (this is fixable in the embedded code, if you want)

Coolness factor: 4/5
Engine required: None. Either upload to a social site, and/or embed the code into any Web page.
Get the widget here: ShareYourself widget

Want to convert embedded widgets to your desktop?

Why are desktop widgets better than browser widgets?

For one, if you’re like me, when your browser accidentally (ahem) closes and all your embedded widgets are gone, you’d like to trash your browser forever.

And then you see your trusty ol’ desktop widgets and you just want to hug them. You might even ask yourself if there is any way to get your embedded browser widgets onto your desktop.

Enter AmnestyWidgets’ HyperCube. AmnestyWidgets is a division of Mesa Dynamics, a provider of Web-to-desktop widget conversion solutions. Hypercube, their flagship product, provides a platform for finding and installing desktop widgets. But the feature that I want to focus on here is its “Create Desktop Widget from Code” tool. This tool allows you to convert any embeddable widget code into a desktop widget. Pure MAGIC!

I tested its alpha version 0.25a for Windows XP. They also have versions for Vista and OS X.

I was able to create lovely desktop widgets from WidgetBox, yourminis and others. In fact, EVERY embeddable widget code I tried was very easily converted into its desktop equivalent.

The obvious caveat, at least for Windows XP users, is that this is alpha software. Yet the “Create Desktop Widget from Code” tool worked flawlessly for me.

Pros: You want to have any awesome embedded widget on your desktop? YOU GOT IT.

Cons: The XP version is alpha. The interface can be confusing, but WidgetAnalytics says that the next release will have an improved interface. If you use only the “Convert to Desktop” tool, like I do, you’ll be fine. Requires a platform installation, but what desktop widget doesn’t?

Coolness factor: 5/5

Platform required: Amnesty HyperCube

Download platform here: Amnesty HyperCube

Widgets of a different color…

Who isn’t talking about going green this Earth Week? It’s a hail storm of green-themed content everywhere we turn: events, print inserts, special features, blogs, mags, lists and advertising messages…the sheer volume is downright un-greenlike in its excess. Mass(ive) marketing!

If you’re looking for a widget to save our earth, well, the technology hasn’t advanced that far yet, though we wholly support and would enjoy the opportunity to report such innovation.

But if you want to go beyond green to full color today, there are several widgets that provide a mental respite from all that serious concern over your “101 Ways I’m Going to Save the Earth” checklist.

To start, engage with the Colorburn widget from Firewheel Design. Find colorful inspiration, whether you go green or not.

Or use the Canvas2 widget on WidgetBox to doodle in your favorite spray brush colors. (Don’t feel any peer pressure today to stick to green; innovate and create with these low-emission colors.)

Finally, if what you really seek is to duck the Al Gore eco-agenda and challenges for a later day, then the Yahoo! Rose-colored Glasses widget might be your best bet. It might make you mellower the next time you’re faced with paying $4 a gallon at the gas pump or having no A/C on a spare-the-air day.

P.S. To keep my own carbon footprint from spreading, I’m off on the bus to the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. Nuggets to follow…

A widget that gives you “conventional wisdom”

There are still a thick handful of analog publications we rely on, including Newsweek, which lands in our snail mail box every Tuesday.

If you’re like us, we first flip through the pages to find one of our favorite Newsweek features: “Conventional Wisdom.”

Conventional Wisdom offers a take on the hottest newsmakers and headline grabbers in the worlds of entertainment, media, politics, news, business… the world at-large. Newsweek calls it a “distillation of the ever-changing thinking of beltway pundits and the chattering classes.”

But there’s no need to thumb through magazine pages to find it.

Just use the widget, fresh with daily “wisdom” and ready to install.

And if conventional wisdom is not your interest, Newsweek offers several other widgets that provide coverage on discreet areas, such as technology and science, health, international news and top ten stories of the week.

Pros: Easy to install to a number of social sites or embeddable to a Web page.

Cons: Not available as a desktop widget, unless you use a tool like Amnesty Cube to convert it to desktop form.

Coolness factor: 4/5

Engine required: None. Can be “uploaded” to a large number of social sites, or embedded into any web page.

Get the widget: here

Looking for a job? Use a widget

A friend of mine asked me if I knew of any good job-finding widgets. The question sent me on a search.

The first one I found was a winner: the Simply Hired widget. It has all the essentials for good, easy job searching.

The widget allows you to search for jobs using your choice of search words in any U.S. location. You can assign any mileage radius around that location, and to search the entire U.S., just leave the location and radius fields empty. The widget saves your searches so you can access any of your searches quickly form the Menu button.

The widget is based on the same job search engine used at the simplyhired.com site.

See a real-world example of the widget in my sidebar on the right-hand-column of this page. Feel free to use it. And good luck with your job search.

P.S. Don’t miss the “Panic” button.

Pros: Not only embeddable to Web pages, but can also be installed as a desktop widget.
Cons: Search is currently limited to the U.S. only. Canada is said to be added soon. It’s not clear that you can single-click any search result to open it. It’s also not clear that to get the desktop widget, after downloading the SpringWidgets platform, you need to find the Simply HIred widget in their Widget Gallery, click the Options button and select the Desktop icon.
Coolness factor: 4/5
Platform required: None, if it will be used on a Web page. As a desktop widget, requires the SpringWidgets downloadable platform (see below).


Get the Web-based widget from SpringWidgets: here
Get the desktop-based platform and widget from SpringWidgets: here