OpenLinkz

It's come to my attention that some large corporations are configuring their firewalls to block widgets. Right now, I know that widgets from WidgetBox have been blocked.

I suppose it was only a matter of time before widgets were targeted. It is well known that many corporate IT departments are against social networking tools. Sites like Twitter, Plurk, Facebook and Mashable are routinely blocked. Even simple tools like Yahoo! email and Google Docs are blocked. The ostensible reason is that network security teams are working to prevent unauthorized applications from introducing viruses and malware or otherwise compromising internal corporate systems.

Of course, these applications can be big time wasters and it is reasonable for corporate management to want to ensure workers keep their nose to the grindstone.

In the meantime, I believe Google Gadgets are still working on most corporate networks. Does anyone know of any more widget platforms that are being blocked?

OpenLinkz is a new widget I have been working on that I'm ready to share.

OpenLinkz is a pop-up menu widget that automatically provides links to commonly used information sources organized by a particular theme. As examples, themes can relate to the stock market, technology, general news, social sites, maps and geography, etc.

OpenLinkz takes a search term that you provide (usually the key word you are highlighting in your text) and constructs the links to each site listed in the theme so the user can immediately retrieve information related to that key word.

So far, there are three ways to use OpenLinkz and I have a nickname for each:

• stockLinkz - OpenLinkz for stock market bloggers
• techLinkz - OpenLinkz for technology bloggers
• newsLinkz - OpenLinkz for those who write about news and current events

Here are some examples (move your mouse and hover over the underlined word):

- Microsoft (MSFT) recently reported strong earnings.

- AJAX is driving the growth of Web 2.0

- Senate leader Harry Reid says the war in Iraq is lost.

OpenLinkz is written in Javascript but the major widget makers consider it an "in-line HTML widget" because it interacts with elements of your page (but in a good way!) To use it, you will need to learn how to use a SPAN or ANCHOR tag and designate a CLASS name for it. The details are all in the Setting up OpenLinkz post.