Yourminis.com blog

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!

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!