After reading about Sprout on the JACC Blog, I decided to give it a try and see what widgets I could create. At first I tried something very simple, a rss feed of the top stories from the Des Moines Register, sized to fit my sidebar (it’s on the right under my multimedia links).

But then, I realized that you could build separate pages withing each widget, opening up countless possibilities. You can also insert video and slideshows into these widgets. Here is my latest attempt, which combines four different feeds… The cool thing is that it can be embedded nearly anywhere, and includes easy buttons to allow users to put it in their facebook and myspace profiles, their blogger blog, and their igoogle page among many other places.

http://farm.sproutbuilder.com/322881/load/9QCl8-_PBJ8eHfAw.swf

Just made another widget using their countdown tool. Did I mention you can also customize the size of the project, something I wish I could do in Vuvox, but perhaps I have found my answer here.

http://farm.sproutbuilder.com/322881/load/xAA6Pe-OBHV8vQpE.swf