fun with widgets
As I pulled deeper into the vortex that is social networking I am compelled to play around with widgets. I was checking two sites today (amongst others): Traineo and Widgetbox. Traineo leverags your social network to help you reach your weight loss & fitness goals. They have a pleasing user interface that reminds me a little of 37signals's work (like Backpack). Widgetbox is a widget hosting and syndication site that makes it easier for technical neophytes to add widgets to their blogs & other sites. They also give widget developers an audience.
Unfortunately I can't get Widgetbox's default widget-installing architecture (SCRIPT tags) to play nicely with MySpace - the SCRIPT tags get removed when I save the updated text. I also can't yet find a way to integrate with Facebook although I heard that they're making a formal announcement today regarding increased Integration features on their site. Right now they have an API that you can call to retrieve information from Facebook (who are my friends, what groups am I in) or to upload pictures... but you can't perform any other upload/write operations beyond photos.
Anyhoo, let's see if the Traineo widget that I found on Widgetbox can easily be added to my Community Server blog. Here goes nuthin...
And it turns out that the SCRIPT tags get blocked by the rendering piece of Community Server. I can see the tag is still here in the HTML editor, even after a save/publish/view/edit cycle. But when I load the newly published entry in my browser and [view source], the SCRIPT tag is gone.
Time to look for plan B. Let me know if you have any hints/ideas.