Today, we’re excited to introduce a new feature for the store gadget: a wizard that streamlines the store creation process. By automating the manual steps in the original instruction guide, the new store gadget wizard should leave you with even more time to focus on your business.

Original Article: Google Labs has launched an interesting new gadget that allows users to create a Google Checkout store in gadget form to use on their blog or web site. According to Google the process is as simple as three easy steps:

1. Sign up for a Google Checkout account

2. Fill out a Google Docs Spreadsheet

3. Set up and insert you gadget

Sounds easy enough. Easily create an online store using a Google Docs spreadsheet. Interesting indeed. "No complicated coding or technical tasks are required," says Google on the gadget’s homepage. "You can get your first online store up-and-running in under five minutes."

As business owners and non-business owners alike look to sell stuff online to make some extra money in a less than ideal economy, a simple way of setting up a store can be just the ticket. With this gadget, once users sign up for Google Checkout, they can list their products in the spreadsheet and manage their inventory right in Google Docs.

The gadget itself can be embedded anywhere, which could be incredibly useful, particularly to those sellers who operate more than one site. In fact, online business owners are often encouraged to blog. Wouldn’t it make sense to have the store embedded right on the blog, for easy access? I think it would in many cases.

The gadget comes in three different sizes – large, small, and tiny. Here is how they look in comparison to one another:

 

When it comes to making the spreadsheet available to customers, you can do this by clicking "share" in the upper right-hand corner in Google Docs Spreadsheets. Then you choose "publish as a web page" from the drop down menu, and make sure that the "automatically re-publish when changes are made" option is checked. Then just click "start publishing".

If you have any trouble using it, Google runs down the whole process here. They have also set up a Google Checkout store gadget forum.

It should be noted that this gadget being a project of Google Labs means that it is still in the experimental stage. Does that mean you can’t use it? Of course not. Let’s not forget that Gmail just left its "beta" status this year. But with the gadget being a lab, just know that it could have bugs.

The "Get Answers" gadget lets site members do the following:

- Ask questions, submit answers, and vote on the answers they think are the best

- Read other questions and answers from the community, sorted by popularity or date

- Quickly view only their own questions to see the answers they’ve received

- See what Google search says about their question

"With the Get Answers gadget, new members can ask questions and get up to speed quickly, current members can share information relevant to your site topic or other topics of interest to them, and you (the site owner) can learn more about the interests of your community, which can help you tailor your content to your visitors’ needs," explains Social App Developer Barry Welch on Google’s Social Web Blog. "As the site owner, you remain in full control and can moderate the gadget by deleting any inappropriate questions or answers."

He also points to a sample site that is set up so you can see the gadget in action. More information about it is also available here.

First off is a Google Gadget that users can insert on their iGoogle home page, complete with customizable settings:

Obviously not everyone uses iGoogle and Google Gadgets though, so they have also created a site based on Google Maps, which essentially provides the same information:

When you enter your home address, the tool will point you to your voting location, though it does note, "Please verify this voting location with your local election officials to ensure that it is correct." They provide other useful information as well. When I enter my Kentucky address, I get a Kentucky voter hotline number and the following links:

    * Are you registered to vote?

    * How to register in Kentucky

    * Kentucky election website

On the Official Google Blog, it says:

To encourage political participation, we’ve opened up this data to third-party sites and developers through an API developed by Dan Berlin, one of our open-source engineers. We’re excited to share this data, and hope that others will find it useful in encouraging citizens to vote.

Organizing information is our mission. We do that every day with web content, and we want to do the same thing with information to inform and empower voters and to help them get to the polls this election season.

If Google’s offering leads to one more vote, it will have done its job. Hopefully it will lead to many more than that, providing a simple way for anyone to obtain the info they need to take advantage of their right to help choose the next leader of this country.

This week another very cool Map driven mapplet and gadget were made available from the Weather Channel – now weather on demand is even more accessible to me.

The widgets can be added to your custom home page, however, I don’t see a mapplet available yet even though news just out today indicates it is available – oh, hold on, try searching for "weather channel" (XML file here) rather than simply "weather" – that’s odd! (weatherbonk, accuweather and others have these available) To add weather channel gadgets to your google home simply login, add stuff, and search for weather.. quite simple.

And finally, weather channel is also available for Google earth as a layer or rich information… see news – The Weather Channel Interactive Introduces New Weather Mapplet for Google Maps; Selected to Provide Weather Data Layer for Google Earth – details as follows – The weather data layer on Google Maps and Earth features current conditions powered by HiRAD (High Resolution Aggregated Data), which is an exclusive patented technology developed by The Weather Channel that delivers a more local snapshot of current weather conditions for the contiguous United States.

HiRAD combines traditional weather observations with data obtained by Doppler radar, satellite, lightning strike detection, computer models, and climate profiles to provide unique conditions for 1.9 million locations.

Comments

A taste:

• The average Gadget is 181 pixels
• 20 or so Gadgets require you to be using Firefox
• Google’s 48 Gadgets account for 44% of all Gadget page views

More stats at this post, too.

Alex Iskold did a look at current mashup/API trends, and he’s got a lot of stats, including that Google Maps is used in 50% of all mashups.

An interesting look by O’Reilly at Google’s philosophy on external data sources. Google doesn’t trust external APIs, and thus just copies and uses the data locally. That has all sorts of implications, including regarding the rights of creators, but also makes me question if there is a problem if Google gives but doesn’t take.

You want more stats? How about the porn industry’s claim to be bigger than Google/Microsoft/Amazon/eBay/Yahoo/Netflix/Earthlink combined. Watch as they claim every vaguely adult-related business falls under the “porn” category.

Oh, and Google Maps was showing an anti-Microsoft image when you searched for Microsoft. “It was an accident!” Sure, sure.

Comments

Tag: