The Flip SIde 1.1.07

The transcript is a host talking about a special edition of The Flipside show, focusing on the Chia Pet Widget. The widget is a small Chia Pet in your dashboard that you take care of. It has new features in version 2.0, such as more preferences, a hibernation switch, and bigger scroll arrows. There is an interview with Gabe, the creator of the Chia Pet widget, who talks about the upcoming release of version 1.1 and new features like giving the Chia Pet a hair set, sleep mode, and the ability to talk. They also discuss the success of the widget and plans for future versions. The host also mentions other widgets available from Novus Designs and Taco Widgets. In the next episode, they will discuss the new Leopard release, top widgets of 2006 and 2007, and issues with widget JavaScripting. Happy New Year! January 1st, 2007. Episode 25. Welcome to The Flipside with John Brown. Hi, welcome to The Flipside. I'm John Brown, your host. This is January 1st, 2007, so Happy New Year, everybody. This is a special edition of The Flipside. Today we're going to be concentrating on a very specific widget that's going to be released in a few days, the Chia Pet Widget, which is created by Novus Designs. Now this is a great widget that mimics the wonderful Chia Pet that we all know and love. There's lots of features to this widget. Basically what it is, it's a little tiny Chia Pet in your dashboard that you take care of. As you take care of it, its hair will grow and you have a health indicator. You can water it and you can care for it. If you don't water it, however, it will shrivel up and die. So you really have to watch out. But in this new version, version 2.0, there are lots of new features. Some of the new features include many more preferences, a new hibernation on and off switch, more dead looking death, bug squashing, and bigger scroll arrows. So now you can enjoy the great Chia Pet that you know and love that you had before. But this time with the 2.0 version, we're actually getting bigger and better, which is just great. I had a chance to sit down with Gabe, the creator of the Chia Pet widget, and talk about it with him. Let's listen to that interview now. Hi, we're talking with Gabe, who is the creator of the Chia Pet widget and works with Novus Designs. Hi, how are you doing, Gabe? Hey, nice to be here, John. Yes, great. Nice to have you. Now Gabe, you said you had some information regarding your Chia Pet widget. Do you want to tell everyone about that? Sure. We are going to be releasing the next version, Chia Pet 1.1, sometime in the next month, probably in the middle of the month. And we're going to have a variety of features updated in the widget. Great. What kind of features would we be looking forward to in this version? Some of the main ones are you're going to be able to give your Chia Pet a hair set. Okay. You're going to be able to have it go to sleep. That was one of the main requests we got. Okay. And the Chia Pet is also going to be able to talk to you. Wow, now those are some pretty cool features. Awesome. So, would you say in general that the response to your Chia Pet widget has been pretty good? Yeah, it's been excellent. We've got a great set of people checking out the Chia Pet right now at the beta, and it's all going really well. Yeah, I also downloaded a copy of the beta. It looks really good, and it's really great. It kind of reminds me of the days before you guys added a lot of the functionality that you have now in the widget. Before it was just sort of a static thing right on your desktop, but now you can interact with it, and you know, it's come a long way, and it's always nice to sit down and talk with people about that. Well, that's great. So, probably I want to head out there. Is there any information for beta people, or do you already have enough testers? Yeah, you can sign up with the data at my site, nondesign.net. Okay. And the front page is a way to get your email address and stuff. Great. Alright, well, we've got a few questions for you. How did the idea of the Chia Pet start? It was actually the designer, Mike Broderick. It was his idea in the beginning, and he had his Chia Pet made already, so it was just one image, and it didn't even grow. Right. And so we hooked up together, and I added the functionality of growth and all the other stuff to his design. Oh, okay. Awesome. What was the progression from the idea of static image until what we see now? Did a lot of people suggest different functionality that you took into consideration, or did you have a plan of action right at the beginning? Suggestions were probably the biggest thing we got things in. Yeah. We got a lot of suggestions on DashboardWidgets.com. Okay. And through a lot of emails, too. Good. And a lot of it just came up with me and him just brainstorming about the widget. Okay, cool. Awesome. Now, it's been a very successful widget. What do you think has attributed to its success? Thanks for that. The graphics, actually, I think are the best part about the widget. Uh-huh. Because it kind of looks kind of cute. Right. I think people will like the graphics of it. Yeah. And the main idea of having a plant growing in your dashboard is pretty cool. Yeah, very cool. Now, are you guys planning on doing any other kind of Chia Pet type widgets? Because I know there's a bunch of the actual Chia Pet products like the human head with the hair growing or whatever. Are you guys dabbling with any of that in that future thing? Yeah. At the website, sometime in the upcoming months, we're going to set up a poll to see like different animals or what people actually want. Okay. And then maybe in Chia Pet version 1.2, we're going to add that. Oh, that's awesome. Cool. That was one of my own personal things. I think that would be really cool. What do you think was the hardest thing that you dealt with while making this widget? In the beginning, I think it was actually getting it to grow. Yeah. Because in the beginning, me and him, none of us really knew JavaScript that well. Okay. And so, it's just learning before we actually got the functionality working. Right. So, what type of JavaScript did you end up using? Was it AJAX or DHTML? Actually, what we did was just have the on on the widget. When the user first opened the widget, it would save the time. Yeah. And then every on show, it would count the time since the first time saved. Oh, okay. Great. That's really cool. And did you have any other challenges while creating the widget along the way? Yeah. Recently, the widget's beginning is kind of complex and pretty big. It's getting hard to manage all that. Right. Yeah. All right. Cool. So, do you have any other advice for people who are wanting to create really cool and interesting widgets like yours? Probably just read a lot of JavaScript books because that's what's really helped me. Yeah. And to stay at it and get a really good designer. Okay. Good. Awesome. Now, speaking of designers, if anyone has ever been to your site, that's NovusDesigns.net, right? Mm-hmm. It's very well designed and it looks really cool. Can you tell us about the site and maybe even the team that you're working with? Because I noticed there's more than one of you. Yeah. Our main designer, Mike, he's designing all the widgets. He's designed the site, that widget, most of our other widgets. Mm-hmm. He's actually a really good designer. Yeah. And it's mostly me and him that work together. Okay. He designed that site and the last update of the site. Okay. Cool. And do you guys work together and create widgets? Now, do you do widgets for other people or are you just providing this as a service for the dashboard community? We've never done widgets for other people, but we're open to it. Sure. Okay. Well, it's always good to get that out there also. Again, that's NovusDesigns.net. And you want to keep your eyes on that site because the newest version of GPET will be coming out soon, as you said before. Mm-hmm. All right. So, can you just plug your website one more time for those of us who may have been sleeping through the interview and then have a couple more questions? That's NovusDesigns.net. Yeah. You can sign up for the beta there and download our other widgets. Awesome. And what other widgets do you have on there for those of us that might not know? We have the 6 when widget. Okay. It'll tell you if you enter your birthday. It'll tell you how many minutes, seconds, and hours you've lived. Okay. We have per account and per shift. Okay. So, basically, personalized countdown and clock widgets. Okay. Those are pretty cool. You could add your own image to the background of the clock or countdown. Oh, okay. Cool. And then we have the last one is metal history. All right. Where the user selects a band and it'll tell them the history of that. Okay. Great. Awesome. So, we've got lots of great widgets out there to try. And it sounds like you guys are doing very well. Well, thank you for coming on to the show. Thank you for having me, John. Okay. Again, that was Gabe over at Novus Designs. And you can check him out over at novusdesigns.net. And check out all of his other great widgets out there. It's a really great group of designers. And they're doing a really good job. So, let's support our widget developers out there. Also wanted to point out that Taco Widgets, you can find them at tacowidgets.com, is going to be releasing a surprise today, January 1st, 2007. So, head over to Taco Widgets and let's all see what that surprise is. We're sure it's going to be a widget or something widget related. So, again, another exciting new sort of thing out there. On the next episode, we're going to be talking about certain things, such as the new Leopard release. Are they going to keep Dashboard in it or not? And a lot of debates on that. We're also going to be looking at the newest widgets that have been coming out this year in 2007. And also some of the top ones of 2006. We're also going to be talking about a few problems that people have been having concerning new types of Javascripting for the widgets, such as better updating of the widget and more compressed Javascripting for faster loading. And we're going to talk about all those on our next episode of The Flipside. So, again, I just want to thank you all for your support and your warm wishes. They are greatly appreciated. I do want to let you know that the show is alive and kicking. I have been very, very busy, especially through this holiday season. And it's just great to see everybody over here and be back in the United States again. But, of course, along with that, a busy lifestyle does follow. So, again, thank you for your patience and thank you for staying subscribed to the show. All right. That's going to do it for today. If you head over to our website, www.widgetshow.com, you can get all the newest information there for our podcast. You can see the show notes for this show and other shows coming up. You can also download and subscribe on iTunes, and there's a link there on the show. Also, it's the beginning of the month, so head over to Podcast Alley and vote for us. There's a vote link right on the top of the site. Again, that's widgetshow at gmail.com to contact me and also www.widgetshow.com for the website. Now, we also have a forum, forums.widgetshow.com, for people to become members of. It's free and it's a great place for widget developers and designers to talk about problems that they're having with their widgets. Unfortunately, the forum has been overrun with spam due to my lack of time, so we are looking for people who are willing to volunteer maybe an hour a day to moderate the forum, help clean up the spam. If you're interested in helping me out at all, please email me at widgetshow at gmail.com. Again, thank you all for supporting the show, and we will catch you all next time on the flip side. Microsoft Mechanics www.microsoft.com www.microsoft.com www.microsoft.com