What was the best dance song of 2008?
This is the third year we are organizing an election using the vote widget to determine what’s the best record. We use a simple system where you have to choose the best out of two. This is the easiest choice to make. In the database there are 100 records. You get random pairs. The voting system is a system that’s (for internet standards) pretty much protected against fraud, since you never know what records or combination you will get.

Local results
This year we are taking the voting a step further. If you embed the widget on your social network or website you can see how people vote on your website. For example, this is what tunes the visitors of hypernarrative.com like. You can compare the results against the global results.

Styling
We also made it possible to adjust the width, with this option you make sure the gadget always fits perfectly to the design of your blog. We used OpenSocial to connect the gadget to Hyves, the largest social network in the Netherlands. With one click you can add the widget to your Hyves profile.

What’s so special about widgets and gadgets
Widgets and gadgets have something special. They can act like a website without being a website. Sure, they need a central database to store information, but they are completely viral. Once you drop the gadget into a social network it can easily spread if people can directly (re)share your gadget.

With gadgets in a lot of personal networks you enter the long tail of users. People might have small networks and will maybe only make thirty votes. But if the gadget has a large user base this long-tail of installations could represent an enormous amount of votes. You distribute the voting interface, but not the election.

This afternoon someone told me about a company that’s making a business out of using empty gadget space. If a gadget is used (for example a Christmas gadget) the gadget often remains on the profile, but isn’t removed. This company creates gadgets and once they are no longer used, they use the inventory as advertising space/network. This is a completely new business, and although social networks will not like it, it’s a very smart idea. Use networks, to create your own network.

Disclaimer: Eclectro is a non-profit blog, we just do it for the love of music and love for the people making music, we will never sell gadgetspace ;)

Eclectro loves …

We couldn’t have made a gadget this advanced just by ourselves. I really want to thank the guys at Freshheads for helping us with the code, flash and database structure (did you know they turned an old office-vault into a dj-booth/club). And also special thanks to the gadgetguys at Open & Sociaal, for connecting the gadget to Hyves and OpenSocial.