Widgets

The Washington Post has an interesting interactive web-based presidential primary election resource that greatly facilitates reading about candidate issues. Upon clicking on a candidate's headshot, users are presented with a list of issues. The font size and position of each issue is based upon the number of stories that contain the candidate and that issue.

This is somewhat misleading because even if one candidate has many hits on abortion, the story may examine how their standing is anti-abortion or be about another candidate and simply mention the initial candidate as their rival in an upcoming debate.

But, assuming users of the application take the time to sample some of the stories (which are pulled from news organizations around the country, not just Washington Post-affiliated sites) they will have a better understanding of the candidate's stance on each major issue.

This program, called a widget, takes what could be solely a text-based subject and transforms it into a visual journey. Yes, readers are still devouring text, but access to that text is through a user-friendly visual medium.

What makes this application really unique is it can be embedded on blogs and other Web sites instead of merely a link (see below). Of course as a user delves deeper into the application, it transfers them to the Post’s Web site for the remainder of the feature. After all, it would not make sense for a newspaper to offer this service if the widget did not link back to their site.



The Washington Post has several similar widgets relating to politics, entertainment, photojournalism and the Iraq War, all accessible from one page.

Environmentally, this has several applications. Much the same as the Post has done with election issues, a widget could be used to track specific environmental topics like land conservation or alternative energy. Or, it could be a map-based interface that transports users to various environmental hot spots in world, all from their own blog.

One unique example of an environmental widget, produced by http://www.co2stats.com/, supposedly offsets the amount of fossil fuels burned while browsing a site with the widget installed. More information on this is available at the Boston Herald’s Green World blog here.

Note: I accidentally published this post while in the process of writing it. So please ignore the previous version if it appears in an RSS reader.