clearspring - the widget network.

When I’m out talking with developers, one request I get often is to have complete control of how they can customize their widget. Well, today it’s possible with Launchpad Advanced.

With Launchpad Advanced, your widget will be first to load and can programmatically invoke any or all of the widget services that we make available.

This includes things like:

• Viral sharing services that allow your widget to be moved around all the major social networks, blogs, start pages, bookmarking sites, and etc.,
• Complete customization of the share menu,
• And full reporting capability about where your widget has been placed and who your users are.

You truly have maximum flexibility over how to innovate using our services.

Launchpad Advanced is available in Action Script 3, Action Script 2, and JavaScript formats.

Oh… and as usual this service is free to all of our platform users. Yes, that means you. So really, what do you have to lose? Give it a whirl.

This is all part of our new Launchpad family of products, In Your Widget (Standard and Advanced) or On Your Page. For those of you that have been using the Launchpad Javascript API to share widgets from your page, note that we’re now calling this “Launchpad On Your Page”, but otherwise all the same functionality is still there.

As always, we value your feedback so send it over to justin@clearspring.com or drop a comment on this blog post. We’d love for you to join the conversation.

Probably my favorite part of being Developer Community Manager here at Clearspring is going out and meeting with developers. On Wednesday, I’m headed to the very warm and sunny Miami, Florida. (It’s been quite cold here in Washington, DC.)

First, I’ll be participating in BarCampMiami, which is February 28th. Clearspring is a sponsor. I hope to lead a discussion of widgets and how they can be used to make your Web content or application viral.

I’m a HUGE fan of BarCamps. Great things come out of bringing smart, passionate people together in community to discuss topics that they care about.

Secondly, I’ll be attending the Carsonified event Future of Web Apps Miami on February 29th.

I’m going to do my best to attend the networking events and parties to meet as many of you as possible. If you’re going to attend either of these events and wanna meetup, e-mail me at justin@clearspring.com. If you see me, please come up and say, Hi.

Over the last few months, it’s been really cool to watch as people develop new and interesting widgets using the Clearspring Widget Platform. Each week someone usually spots one or two interesting widgets and it’ll float around the office via e-mail.

As you can see from some of our previous blog posts, from time to time, we like to highlight some of the widgets we come across.

We’d love to hear more about some of the widgets that you’ve developed. If you’ve done something interesting or innovative with your widget, send it to us and maybe we’ll highlight it on the Clearspring blog.

So… feel free to e-mail me the cool widgets you’re building to justin@clearspring.com.

As always, if you have any questions about Clearspring or the platform, e-mail me. I’m happy to answer questions or at the very least, point you to the answer.

I’m a big movie fan so every year award shows like the Oscars are quite the event. Usually, my friends will come over, we’ll print off the ballots, and guess which movies and actors will win awards.

Well this year, I can use the Oscar.com widget to countdown every second till the big event on this Sunday evening.

The widget has a lot of cool features. As I mentioned before, there is a running countdown up to the event. The widget gives a rundown of the nominees, has an Oscar trivia game, plays the video trailer for the television broadcast, and provides an Oscar news feed.

There is another really cool aspect to this widget. All of its content is also available from a Web-enabled mobile phone. Press the button that says “Mobile”, enter your information or the information of the user you want to send the mobile widget to, press send, and a text message will be sent with the information on how to retrieve the widget.

The Oscar.com widget is a great example of how a widget can help you garner excitement around an upcoming event, help you to identify who your vocal and passionate users are, and act as a medium to pass them rewards such as special exclusive content.

Despite the fact that their initial rise to success happened when I was a toddler, U2 has easily become one of my favorite rock bands. I was excited when I heard that U2 was coming out with U2 3D, a full length movie of one of their concerts. I was even more excited when I heard there was a U2 3D widget that uses the Clearspring platform.

If you’re like me and grabbed this widget the first time you saw it, go back and check it out again!!! There is an easter egg within the widget.

Here’s what you need to do:

• Go to the U2 3D Widget Page.
• Find the U2 3D logo in the upper left hand of the widget.
• Click and hold on the logo for 3 seconds. A password box will appear.
• Type in the password – u23d
• Some behind the scenes video will appear.
• Grab the widget and share it with your friends.

None of us at Clearspring knew there was an easter egg within the widget, until a few days ago. When we heard, we were all blown away.

This is such a great way to reenergize your widget campaign and get your users to view and share the widget for a second or third time.

After being at Clearspring for a week, one of my favorite aspects of the job has been working with an incredibly talented and driven team. Everyone has interesting complex problems to solve, knows the role they play, and gets things done.

The team’s excitement is contagious. It makes you want to give 100%.

All of the recent news in the widget platform space validates the feeling that we’re apart of something big.

Well you too can be part of the Clearspring team. These are the positions we’re looking for.

• Web Developer
• Senior Network (Unix/Linux) Engineer with specialty in remote data center builds/management
• Java software engineers. Server side, core Java, software product experience required.

If you’re interested in learning more about the jobs or Clearspring, please e-mail jobs@clearspring.com.

If you wanna learn more about Clearspring and its platform, please e-mail me at justin@clearspring.com.

While many of us in the Clearspring developer bullpen were sipping our morning coffee or Red Bull,  our VP of product Joel shared with us that Goowy, the company behind the widget platform YourMinis, has been acquired by AOL, Inc.

Congratulations to the YourMinis crew! Very cool!

Despite being a dreary rainy day in the Washington DC metro area, today’s news demonstrates that it’s an exciting  time to be in the widget platform space. In the next few months, it  will be fun to see what kind of innovations happen.

Here at Clearspring,  we’re committed to leading that innovation and eager to see how our users respond to the new platform features that we’ll be releasing soon.  Stay tuned…

The online microblogging service Twitter has become one of my favorite ways to stay in touch with the people and organizations that I care about.

Now you can use Twitter to follow Clearspring and our adventures, as we work hard to make the best widget platform ever.

Follow us and we’ll follow you back.