Sprout Builder: My life as a widget

Sprout is a free online service that lets you construct your own widgets. Widget construction is done in a development environment called "Sprout Builder," which provides extensive layout tools and templates. Using Sprout Builder you can create pages and add media assets, including video, audio, and images. Media assets can be uploaded to your Sprout account, or accessed via links to other sites such as YouTube. Sprout also allows you to add RSS feeds to your widgets' pages. So you can think of each Sprout widget as a multi-page mini website in which you can navigate among the pages.

You got video? Put it in a widget. You got a blog? Put it in a widget. You got photos? Put them in a widget. You got a life? Put it in a widget. Not a videographer, author, or photographer? No problem. There is plenty of public domain content on the web that you can use. Here is a Sprout widget I constructed with public domain photographs and video about World War I aircraft.




I used this widget to enhance my WhyPark Pursuit Squadron website:

www.PursuitSquadron.com

Below is an image of the Sprout Builder widget development environment. It takes a little time to figure out because it offers so many features. I'm not sure how often I'll be using Sprout, but it is nice to know that it is available.

123RF Images for Content and Referral Income

123RF is a source of free images and referrals that you might find useful. I've used one of their free images at my WhyPark site:

www.EarthTheater.com

To the left of the image is a 123RF referral banner. Clicking this banner will take you to their site (or go to 123RF dot com).

BTW, when you open a 123RF account, you get a free credit to purchase one "blog" quality image. I used my credit on a great photo related to one of my UNESCO World Heritage names:

www.MirCastle.com

Nice quality and relevant content, IMO. Below is an example of a free image from 123RF and a small banner ad.

First Impressions of Google Lively

I spent some time checking out Google Lively. This is a new program that allows you to create shared 3D spaces and embed them in your web sites. Google provides a catalog of avatars and objects to inhabit and accessorize your spaces. Among the the objects you can place in your 3D spaces are picture and (YouTube) video viewers.

I have a WhyPark site with photography content. And, my initial thought was that it would be neat to provide visitors with a 3D space containing interesting photos. So I created a space and dropped in some photo frame gadgets from the Lively Catalog. The gadgets were able to display photos hosted by ImageShack. However, when I placed the photo frames where I wanted them in my space, the picture images were rather small and unimpressive. Not the photo gallery experience I was hoping for. However, maybe the space template I was using (an island) wasn't optimal for my purposes.

While my 3D photo gallery is still a work in progress, there is another approach for using Google Lively with WP sites. Simply select an appropriate popular public room and embed it in your WP layout. As Lively users move around, chat, and change the objects in the room, they will be making your WP site more interesting.

Here's my photo site with an embedded Lively room:

www.MemoryIsland.com

Note:
To enter the 3D space you'll need to download Lively, which currently only runs on Windows XP and Vista.

You can tell by the domain name why I wanted to try out an island template for my photography 3D space. Below is an example of a Lively room.