Go Go Google Gadgets

If you sign in to Google you get access to a personalized homepage (personalized in that you can change what's displayed on it). Developers can create "gadgets" which any user can add to their Google homepage. Gadgets list the latest headlines, or the weather, or display the time in New York, whatever.

You probably knew all that already. This week, though, Google decided to let gadgets be syndicated - i.e. you can use them on any web page, not just your personalized homepage. This makes investing the effort in reading the Gadget documentation slightly more worthwhile.

I figured I'd have a go at crafting a gadget that displays terms that are currently cropping up more often than expected in science blogs (the "Top Terms Today" part of the Postgenomic frontpage, basically): this turned out to be very easy.

Clicking on the button above adds the Postgenomic gadget to your Google homepage. By default all blogs in the Postgenomic index are included but you can filter by category, too - just click on the "edit" link in the title bar.

Syndicating the gadget is pretty simple, too: it involves sending site owners to a page where they can customize colours and settings: the page then displays the necessary javascript. I can't say that I'm a big fan of Google's default colour and border schemes, but apparently you can override them manually if you prefer.