We've been working with the folks over at AOL to integrate our widgets into the myAOL gallery.  We're happy to say that as of yesterday, thirteen of our widgets are officially part of the myAOL gallery.  We'll definitely look to roll out additional widget in the near future, but you can start adding the existing ones to your myAOL pages immediately!

To access the yourminis widgets inside of myAOL, you can begin by logging into myAOL and then clicking the "full gallery" link that's located towards the top of page.  You'll be able to search for our widgets (and others) via the search box, or you can go can simply click on the "yourminis" link within the category section on the left hand side.

Once you see a widget that you like, simply click the button to add that widget to your myAOL page.  You can add a few of them at once, and when you're done, click the "Go Back to myPage" link.  You'll be brought back to your page - and the newly selected widgets will be available.  You'll be able to edit your widgets within the environment, and your changes will be automatically saved for you.

Below is a screenshot of what my myAOL page looks like, full of yourminis widgets, of course!

We also want to take a second to thank the folks at myAOL - they have been fantastic to work with and we know that they're going to do great things with the product.

Check it out and let us know what you think!

Our latest update delivers a few new reports, some enhanced level of granularity with respect to syndication options and some changes to our web site UI. 

Starting with the changes to the UI first, we've removed some of our lightbox Flash interfaces with more standardized HTML.  This includes registration, sign in, password retrieval, and widget uploading/editing functionality.  All of our popup Flash interfaces have been replaced with speedier, more intuitive HTML based interfaces.

As a widget owner,  you now have the ability to determine which platforms your widget can be distributed to.  Generally you want your widget to live in as many places as possible, but there are times when there may be a conflict of interest, a difference in functionality available or some other reason to restrict a widget from being single click embedded to a various networks.  We give you the flexibility to remove each network from our "copy" options on a widget by widget basis.

Finally, we've added additional enhancements to our reporting platform.  Specifically, we've added time spent as a grouping and filter property for interaction reports.  This means that you can actually get a sense for how much time people are spending interacting with your widget.  In our next update, we're planning on having this same statistic for widget views, so that you get a sense for how long your brand is in front of a consumer, even if they're not directly interacting with it.

As always, enjoy the update and let us know if you have any issues or suggestions for improvements in our forums.

Looks like we're on a bit of a roll with the release of another very cool widget.  The CBS Sportsline Scoreboard widget allows you to monitor the scoreboards from the NBA, NHL, MLB, NFL, WNBA and NCAA.

It also gives you the ability to vote for whatever team you think will win the game (prior to the start of each game) and to see how the rest of the community is voting.  If the widget isn't giving you all of the information you need, click out to see stats, game recaps, message boards and more.

Have fun!

We just launched a new widget for Shopzilla.com.  Check the widget out below, or in our gallery.

The Shopzilla product search widget allows you to search Shopzilla for any item. After selecting the widget, either type in a search term to begin, or simply choose one of the of the items available in the browse list. Once you search the results will be presented inside of the widget. You can then click on any of the results to see more details of the item. You can also completely customize the appearance of the widget by clicking on the color picker icon to change the background color, the background border to be square or rounded, add a transparency level and even add a custom background image. Finally, if you're an affiliate, you can enter in your affiliate ID and use this widget on your own sites.

Check it out, and let us know what you think!

We pushed out another update last night, making it possible for our widgets to "click out" of MySpace.  About a year ago, MySpace made it impossible for Flash widgets to open a browser to a URL outside of the MySpace domain - you can see some coverage of this from Mashable.  In effect, this rendered some of our widgets somewhat useless. 

With this release we have resolved the problem.  When you click within a widget we will display a section of HTML code below the widget which will ask you to click it in order to open the link you were trying to access.  This second click will launch the page as expected.  Here's a screenshot of a our games widget after a category within the widget was clicked on - notice the "Click Here To Open Your Link" below the widget:

Also, we've added support for the MySpace "captcha".  When you post directly to MySpace, you may be asked to verify a captcha to show that you are a "real" person - this seems to be account dependant.  Once you input the image verification, we'll post your widget as you would expect.

Enjoy the updates!

A few weeks ago, we quietly rolled out our new summary reports.  The summary reports provide an extremely simple and intuitive way to get "at a glance" metrics as to how your widgets are being spread and used throughout the Internet.  The reports provide a timeline detailing the number of views that your widgets received on a day by day basis, along with data calling out the total number of views and the trend, the percentage of views from the largest source, the number of interactions/clicks/unique viewers/copies for a particular time period selected from the timeline (to adjust the dates, simply drag and drop the slider control on the bottom of the timeline).  We also display a couple of graphs to detail the number of views by domain and to show new vs. returning users.

This release was focused on improving the detailed reports so that they matched the simplicity and depth of the summary report.  We've been able to do even better than our initial expectations.  When displaying any of the detail reports, we'll show you a trend analysis across the time period that you're interested in:

Once you've gotten a sense for the overall data, you can group the data by various attributes, depending on the report.  In the case of the copies data, you can group by source, destination, domain, user, country, region and city.  You can then proceed to filter by the data that's returned.  As an example, you can group the report by source and then filter by a specific site - this allows you to drill down on the data in any number of ways.  It may take a while to find all of the features available, but once you become comfortable with the interface, you are likely to find that it's an invaluable resource for measuring the health of your widgets.

In addition, we've expanded the documentation in our partners section, in an attempt to highlight some of the additional value that our platform provides.  If you still have questions, we encourage you to get in contact with us.

As always, please feel free to share your comments and thoughts, both here and in our forums.

It's no secret that I'm a fan of Digg.  This would be the third project I've built on their API (the other two can be seen here and here).   This project is basically what I'd call a more interesting version of the 'Digg This' button.  Essentially, it is a real-time, customizable flash embed that displays the amount of diggs (and possibly other info like number of comments) given a particular story id.  In the example below, you will see Mario hit the coin box every time the story is dugg, no need to refresh the page.  Additionally, an official 'digg this' button is appended and updated via Javascript every time the story is dugg.

There are several other styles available, check out the gallery page to experiment.  If you wanted to get custom visitor statistics for your widget (views, interactions, etc), just hit the 'remix me' button in the gallery page and you'll be given access to stats specific to the widget you create.  This is a cool way for visitors of your site to see that people are giving attention to your digg story.  You could really customize this to do whatever you want... simply make a flash file published for Actionscript 2.0 and upload it somewhere... then load it from the "Custom" option in the drop down menu in the gallery page.

Use the following template:

System.security.allowDomain(_parent._url)
function updateDiggs(story)
{
    //this function is called roughly every 5 seconds
    //story.diggs will give you the number of diggs.
    //story.comments will give you the number of comments.
}

function resize(w,h)
{
  //event to resize to the width and height of the widget if necessary
}

function setColor(color)
{
    //event to change the color of anything if necessary
}

for any other questions email:
h a r t @ g o o w y m e d i a . c o m

yourminis.com has received the "Webware 100" award for the "browsing" category by CNET Webware. The finalists for the "Webware 100" awards were selected by the editors of Webware.com, a CNET site, but the ultimate winners were picked by the users of the sites - that means all of you. 

The "Webware 100" Awards recognizes the best Web 2.0 sites, services, and applications that are leading the next wave of innovation. Webware.com editors received and reviewed thousands of entries. Finalists were selected and featured in an online voting poll, where users voted and ultimately selected 100 winners in 10 categories. A list of the winners can be found at www.webware.com/100

The ten categories are Browsing (web browsers, extensions, widgets, and security); Communications (e-mail, chat, VOIP); Community (social networks, groups); Data (search, storage, backup, sharing, and sync); Entertainment (games and contests); Media (audio, video, photo); Mobile (portable utilities and apps); Productivity (apps, business tools, commerce); Publishing (blogging, web content, design tools); and Reference (mapping, reference works, and education).

Thanks for getting out there and casting your vote for us - we truly appreciate it!