The Flip Side 07.17.07

The host of "The Flipside with John Brown" apologizes for his four-month absence and mentions that widgets are making a comeback via the iPhone. He discusses the developer page for iPhone widgets and mentions websites like iWidget Gallery and iPhoneWidgetList.com where users can find and preview different iPhone widgets. He also mentions websites like MoGits and Gridgits that allow users to manage and organize their iPhone widgets. The host also mentions a new widget called the Shredder widget that securely erases and encrypts documents. He encourages listeners to share their feedback and tips on porting dashboard widgets to the iPhone. He also mentions the iPhoney application for testing iPhone widgets. The host ends the episode by mentioning user comments, listener feedback, and opportunities for contributing to the show. July 17th, 2007, Episode 28, Welcome to the Flipside with John Brown. Hello everyone and welcome to the Flipside. I'm your host John Brown and I do want to say thank you for everyone who has stayed subscribed over my four month absence to the show. Can't be explained by anything other than work, a whole lot of work and the podcast unfortunately had to take a back burner. But I really enjoy doing the show and there has been a lot of widget related news out there so let's just jump right in. The first thing we're going to cover today is the aspect of widgets making a comeback via the iPhone. Now a lot of the iPhone web apps are in fact Ajax powered widgets. That's how we've been using for years now on the Tiger platform and dashboard. We have a few websites out there that are going to be listing these widgets and we're also going to be going over how to make them. More compatible for the iPhone as well as the widget realm spans not only Tiger and the dashboard but now also Safari and the iPhone. The iPhone is just as much widget as our lovely dashboard interface that we know and love so we're going to be covering both aspects, the iPhone widget development and dashboard widget development. The first story in iPhone widget development is the developer page that Apple has put up and you can find a link to that in the show notes. Developers can create web 2.0 applications that look and behave just like applications built into iPhone and provide seamless integration with iPhone applications and services including making a phone call, sending an email and displaying a location in Google Maps. Third party applications created using web standards can extend the iPhone's capabilities without compromising its reliability or security. Instead of creating applications, Apple has decided to use web Ajax powered widgets that can mimic the look and feel of the iPhone interface to bring more functionality which I think is great. If you head over to the developer page for iPhone on Apple's website, you will find a whole list of tips, tricks and techniques to use when developing your widgets for the iPhone. Another website I stumbled upon was a website called iWidget Gallery and it's a gallery website listing of all the iPhone widgets available for your iPhone. So if you're lucky enough to have an iPhone then you should run right out there and type this right into your Safari browser. It's ipwid.com and you can find a link to that in the show notes. You can also preview what each widget looks like on Safari on your Mac before you connect your iPhone to the website so you can browse it not only on your phone but also on your Mac. DigiWidget, widget gallery for iPhone widgets is a great way to recreate the look and feel of your iPhone interface. It's a great website designed to make using iPhone widgets easy and user friendly. Basically the layout is similar to the layout of the widgets you already have on your iPhone. So just tap and go, you don't have to worry about entering any URLs or anything. DigiWidget.com is the website you can find a link to that in the show notes. We also have yet another iPhone widget list. This is more DashboardWidgets.com style. You really wouldn't want to browse this on your iPhone but this might be a great place to go to check out and see what widgets are now available for the iPhone. It's called the iPhoneWidgetList.com. You can find a link to that in the show notes. List is a reference site to find iPhone widget and app concepts on the web. We expect this list to evolve from prototypes and concepts to working web apps formatted specifically for the iPhone. And you can also submit your widgets there if you've created one which is just great. MoGits are web widgets for your iPhone. MoGits are mobile web widgets or web applications designed specifically for iPhone. There's an Amazon one that looks really impressive. It looks just like the site only it's shrunk down just to fit right in the screen. If you own an iPhone or if you have to use these, you create a free account. You have to use these. You create a free account and then you can manage your widgets through Safari on iPhone. So you can actually add your own widgets so it's more of a widget manager. Speaking of widget managers, similar to MoGits which is at MoGits.com. Again, the link is in the show notes. Gridgits is one of the more impressive websites out there that is allowing you to organize your iPhone apps with style. Basically, this German designer has decided to add a lot of really cool JavaScripts and effects that you would see on your iPhone anyway into this wonderful website so that it mimics the style of your iPhone and it's very easy to use and user friendly. Again, that's gridgits.com. As soon as you pull that up, you'll understand what I mean because as soon as you pull that up, man, all the icons just zoom right in just like you would see on your iPhone. So that's pretty much the news out there today for iPhone widgets and widgets on your Mac. There are a few widget releases. I only want to mention one because I'm really impressed with it. It's called the Shredder widget and you can find a link to that in the show notes. Basically, it keeps all your documents safe and secure and in this day and age when we really need to erase a document, the Shredder widget does just that but it also encrypts the data as it's being erased so that there's no way and there's no possibility of it ever being recovered. This could be a good thing or a bad thing but again, a great, great functional, elegant, well designed and very, very user friendly widget out there. Again, it's the Shredder widget and there'll be a link to that in the show notes. Now, a lot of people have saw my last post on the website and basically a user had taken a widget designed by Apple, the Tile Game widget, had uploaded it to their server and was playing it on their iPhone. Now, what a great, great way to see how dashboard widgets can be ported right over to the iPhone with little or no coding that they have to do. If you are porting a dashboard widget over to the iPhone, please let us know, widgetshow.gmail.com and let us know the process. We would love to get some audio comments on that or even comments over on our blog. That's www.widgetshow.com. Again, if you're porting a dashboard widget over to the iPhone, we really, really want to hear your feedback because we already know that there's a lot of other designers doing that. For example, Taco Widgets. If you go to tacowidgets.com, you'll see that they've ported two of their widgets already over to the iPhone platform and you can actually see how those work. If you have an iPhone and if you don't have an iPhone, you can download an application called iPhoney, I-P-H-O-N-E-Y. It's a great application that mimics the user experience on the iPhone. If you have a chance to go to iPhoney.com, again, the link to that will be in the show notes and you can actually punch in all these URLs that I was telling you before to see how it would look on the iPhone. iPhoney application is also a great way to test your iPhone widgets because the iPhone has a fixed dimension. You have to keep your widgets constrained to that screen size for the best possible user experience. You don't want your users to have to be scrolling all over the place. If you don't have an iPhone, iPhoney application is definitely the way to go for testing it. It's not perfect, but it is a great tool for testing. That brings us to the user comments and listener feedback part of the show. Today, we had a comment from a listener who commented on our XMLHttpRequest tutorial, which we had posted for quite some time now. Basically, his comment said, why use XMLHttpRequest to retrieve the version number? Why not just use a Widget.System call to compare the version and save yourself some code? We did have a beginner level Widget.System tutorial out there on our website, but we are always looking for more. If there's anyone out there who would love to share their knowledge with Widget.System commands for the dashboard widgets, we would certainly love to hear from you. We'd certainly love to see a tutorial put together on that. We'll definitely feature it on the show, feature it on the podcast, and even do an interview. If you want to send in your audio comments, tips, or feedback, you can email those to WidgetShow at gmail.com. Well, the show has been fun. I really enjoyed talking to you guys about the iPhone and the dashboard widgets and how they're going to be working hand-in-hand. We're going to keep the show short from now on. I'm going to keep them to the point. I really enjoy getting all your feedback. If you have any questions or comments for me, go ahead and send them to WidgetShow at gmail.com. If you have a widget that you're making and you're releasing, then contribute to the show. Go ahead and tell us about the widget that you've made, and we'll feature that right on the front page of the blog. If you want to contribute to the show, you can review any of the products that we've reviewed on the show, any of the websites. If you have a comment on those, go ahead and send those to me. We also have a hotline at 206-333-0417. That's 206-333-0417. If you call this hotline, anything you leave on the voicemail will be automatically sent to me, and we'll include that as an audio comment on the show. We're also looking for people to write for our blog, so if you're interested in writing for WidgetShow.com, please let me know. Send your resume and writing samples to WidgetShow at gmail.com. All right. Well, thank you very much. I really appreciate you staying subscribed and listening. I'll catch you all next time on the flip side.