Do You Know What a Widget Is?

Widgets. Those cute internet search boxes you can download for free from Yahoo, Google, Widgetbox and a bunch of other cool sites. You can pick a weather widget, a travel widget, a clock widget, a countdown to Bush's last day in office widget, or a see my Redbubble.com artwork widget - which is there in the right column of my blog. Whatever you're into, there is probably a widget out there you can post on your blog, Facebook, or website.

I'm involved in redesigning the Travelocity Widget Search Boxes for our World Choice Travel partners. No kidding and it's fun! We have the stand alone widget box for searching Hotel, just air fare, or just car deals...we have the MPSB (Multi Product Search Box) Ha! Don't ya love acronyms! and the list goes on.

When I was first hired I spent days Googling and downloading widgets to my Facebook and this blog. I was testing their functionality and stability as well as how hard were they to post. Some are good, some not so good. But, one thing they all share is the "cool" factor once they are on your page.

Widget designers are like "Gods"...well More like Cardinals next to the IT Gods who can hack the un-hackable. Anyway....everyone needs a widget...so go find one now. Google free widgets, and figure out how to get it up on your Facebook. They are fun and a great way to spread the word...what ever word that may be...God's word, Webster Dictionary words, or Urban slang words...there are widgets for everyone just waiting for you to download!

What’s it mean to be “Creative” in the 21st Century?

Here’s the test. If you pass it - you are 21st century creative.

Goes like this. (1.) Do you find that your brain likes to visualize things? And by things, I mean you like to picture big parties where you’ve decorated the tables with lemons and green apples, except you’ve put them in translucent blue-green pipes that shoot 23 feet in the air… or you day dream what you’d do with a wind fall - right down to what your toilet looks like and how your new cars smell. (2.) Do you ever fill in the blank when people pause for too long? Like in TV ads or regular conversation, example: Bob is telling you about his fishing trip and how the mosquitoes were biting and then he pauses too long…..and you blurt out the first thing that comes into your head and say, “You whipped out a chainsaw and went after them little buggers until you got every last one of them, but accidentally chopped your wife’s ear off”. And he looks at you all strange and says, “No?” (3.) After a day at the office you find that watching TV doesn’t cut it so you go in your garage and break out a blow torch and melt old army men together for the fun of it? (4.) You hear a great sentence or spoken line and you immediately see how it could be turned into a website and you start jabbering all the ways to promote it and make money. (5.) You rewrite people’s emails, billboards, print ads, license plates and such, to make them funnier or better. (6.) You see a great house but can’t help thinking, if they’d only put a little more energy into their windows and landscaping it might actually pass as cool. (7.) Sometimes when you should be focused on a boring task you completely ditch it in favor of a spontaneous trip to the casinos (8.) You find yourself oddly drawn to well-designed department store windows and the way they draped fabric over stone and fake pools of water to create a Dali-esque environment. (9.)You understand post modern and all it’s magic and you’d never get caught with a porcelain rooster or duck in your kitchen, or anywhere in your house for that matter. (10.) You’ve been known to go to Home Depot and buy colorful, shiny lacquer outdoor paint and start changing the finish on anything that looks shabby.

How’d you do? You said yes to a bunch of them? Ha! Great, but here’s the thing, I was just kidding…these things don’t necessarily make you creative, more like weirdly innovative, inspired, original, imaginative, etc. Good for you and go forth, carry on, and continue to shake the world up a bit!