Thursday, May 20, 2010

Goodbye Legacy Gadgets!

I migrated my Google Gadgets from the legacy API to the gadgets.* API this week.  It was a fairly simple process following the migration guide provided by Google.  There is also a tool to migrate your gadgets, but where is the fun in that?  Everything seems to work fine.  I implemented the canvas view in the Marine Observations gadget.  It really helps by offering a larger map area in the canvas view.  Don't see a need for it in the other gadgets at this time.  If you run into any problems with my gadgets, let me know.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Gadget Tracking

Though helpful, the iGoogle Gadget Dashboard is limited.  The Dashboard only tracks data for gadgets with over 100 users -- not good for new gadgets unless you just happen to have a blockbuster on your hands.  So, I started to use Google Analytics to track my gadgets per these instructions.  It's only been a few days, but some interesting/confusing things have popped up.

I expected the daily page views from Google Ananlytics and the Dashboard to be somewhat close to each other.  But after only a few days, the Dashboard is reading more than twice the page views that Google Analytics is reporting.  I'm well aware that folks don't trust third party stats programs and will block them, but half of the users is a bit much, don't you think?

Even though the Dashboard advertises that it will show the top ten countries, it only shows me the US as 62% of my users for my most popular gadget.  However, Google Analytics shows more countries with the US as 98% of my users.  What gives?

So, any ideas?  Is this approach to tracking gadget usage with Google Analytics broken or not supported everywhere?  What say you?

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Calculator Gadget

I just republished a seventh gadget:
  • Just Another Calculator (JAC) - Not the best name, I know, but it includes memory and a commas display option along with some basic math operations.
Thinking about adding programmer functions to it.  We shall see how it goes.

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Google Gadgets

After an 18 month absence, I have decided to get back into Google Gadget development.  Two surprises!

  1. First, the old _IG gadget namespace is still around.  Furthermore, the new gadgets namespace does not seem to work in web syndication.  Seems I saw a post on how to resolve that.  Will have to look for it later.
  2. There do not seem to be many new gadgets.  Makes me wonder how many folks actually use the igoogle page.
I republished my old gadgets with some slight modifications.  Here they are:
  • Marine Weather Observations Near You -  This gadget accepts a locaton as city state, zip code or lat/long and returns a map showing buoys, coastal land stations and ships within 150 nautical miles of the location. USA Weather RADAR is also shown thanks to the good folks at Iowa State University. This is a tabbed gadget. The 'Map' tab contains the map of stations. Hovering over a marker on the map in the 'Statons' tab retrieves the current obserations from the NOAA National Data Buoy Center (NDBC) web site into a pop-up window. The 'Help' tab offers more information on this gadget.
  • Unix Timestamp Calculator  -Converts Unix Timestamps to date/times and vice versa.
  • Peg Game  - The classic pegs game on a triangle. Eliminate all but the last peg by jumping neighboring pegs. Written in Javascript/HTML/CSS.
  • USA.gov Search  - A search gadget for the USA.gov web portal.
  • Weather Calculator  - Weather Calculator calculates heat index and wind chill, and performs temperature, wind speed and barometric pressure unit conversions.
  • Word Guess  - Guess the five-letter word in five tries or less.
My intent is to use this blog to keep you up to date on changes to my gadgets and possible share some tips and techniques as I come across them.  Enjoy!