UTW and AdSense

Aaron sent in two widgets that are remarkably similar to some earlier widgets: a widget for Ultimate Tag Warrior and a widget for AdSense. These widgets look great to me.

I wonder how many of these we’ll have in a few more months. The expanding variety of controls and results is nice; there doesn’t have to be a difinitive widget for each purpose. It makes me glad to see more choices and I have a feeling this is an indication that the API is highly learnable.

Still, widget developers, save yourself time when you can. There are a lot of widgets already and most of them are open-source. Word to the wise: search.

AdSense

Mike Smullin also made an AdSense widget. While it’s already possible for self-hosted blog admins to paste AdSense code into a Text widget, this might be a little bit nicer as it lets you customize color, size and title from the widget panel.

Chitika eMiniMalls

Chitika, a very popular service that helps you make money from your blog, has completed their eMiniMalls Sidebar Widget plugin for WordPress. The eMiniMall is a slick, interactive shopping kiosk embedded into your website.

I don't usually try every widget that comes across my desk but I had to take this one for a test drive. It's quite a treat for me, especially after writing all of the simple widgets that come with the plugin, to see a widget so rich with features. It's a multi-widget so you can have up to nine of them. The pop-up control panel lets you choose from several sizes and set up your own colors so that your widget fits beautifully with any theme. It has an Advanced mode for setting up keyword-based ad filtering and an AJAX form for testing your keywords without leaving the widget control panel. This is good stuff.

To use it, you first have to sign up for a Chitika affiliate account. (That's our signup referral link. Thanks for clicking!) After you receive your associate ID, download and activate the Chitika widget plugin to enable the widget. Enter your ID in the widget's control panel and you're on your way.

BidVertiser

Here’s a widget for easily placing ads on your sidebar. Brought to you by the folks at BidVertiser.

Ad Rotator

This widget was built with advertisements in mind but it looks like you can use it to rotate any sort of HTML. Quotes, photos, sponsor badges, you name it.

e-Commerce Lite

Instinct Entertainment updates their shopping cart plugin with widget support.

The demo wasn't running superbly when I checked it out but this has a LOT of promise.

Google AdSense

Many people have figured out that it's possible to put AdSense code in the built-in Text widgets. Otto went the extra mile and made a new plugin that adds up to four additional widgets just like Text widgets except they're called AdSense widgets.

Paypal Donate

Patrick Chia has done a nice job creating a PayPal Donate Button widget. I tested the one in his sidebar–gave him five bucks–and it worked flawlessly. Not sure about the button styling, but something can always be done about that.

Now Reading

Rob Miller's Now Reading plugin now sports a nice widget. On his blog, you can see his Recent and Planned reads, plus a link to Amazon where you can buy the book (and support Rob's reading habit).