Lowest Common Denominator?

Last night I added my first widget to iGoogle. And the lucky widget was--Dancing with the Stars. Last April my fourteen year old niece visited from London and got me hooked on it. In fact, so hooked was I that during our recent trip to Wyoming and Montana we hiked during the day and watched Dancing with the Stars at night. Apologies to my husband--the long-suffering guy in the blue shirt, who has seen about as much as he wants of Cloris Leachman's body.

***Update*** My Dancing with the Stars widget had a very brief life on iGoogle. When I signed into iGoogle to print out my September roving calender, the Adobe Flash 9 add-on crashed the internet. How embarrassing it was to confess to tech support why this had happened. Lesson learned: what works on my computer at home may not be compatible with the system at work.

Happenings Unleashed

How cool would it be to have an interactive online Happenings which would give the readers the ability to sign up for programs, ask questions like "would my four year old enjoy this?," or comment on books?

And maybe an online version of Happenings could have a space for "this just in" to publicize tours or programs that didn't make the print deadline. And a space for program photos to which branches could contribute. A space to advertise new Recommended Sites or licensed databases. Interactive=Friendly.

RSS feeds vs. widgets

Judging from our blog posts, setting up RSS feeds seems to be one of the more challenging explorations. I am wondering whether the library might want to think about offering widgets instead: programming widgets, readers' advisory widgets, etc. (Ok, I am still not exactly sure what a widget is, but I think my husband has one from NOAA sitting on his desktop that gives the forecast for our zip code.) An RSS feed that isn't particularly active might simply be purged from our users' computers, but a widget gives them control over when to click.