Universal Press Syndicate’s uClick division has released a iGoogle gadget that allows anyone to view their favorite GoComics comic strips and editorial cartoons on their personalized iGoogle home pages.
We are truly excited here at Uclick to offer this new gadget, which was many months in the making. It gives iGoogle users direct access to today’s comics (with expandable views), plus comments, tags, and recently favorited comics. In other words, you get a lot of the fun, interactive features – the experience, if you will – of GoComics.com, right on your iGoogle page.
Clicking on the comic to expand it to a readable size opens a larger pane that allows readers to navigate to their next selected comic.
Too bad they don’t allow users to add Sherpa comics into any of their setting. Either the site or the widget.
WHAT??? They won’t allow users to read my Sherpa strip on that new fangeled gadget? Guess no royalty checks for me 🙁
haha…nice! I was pleasantly surprised to see the widget and of course loaded it up. I’ve been switching from Argyle Sweater to Calvin and Hobbes for the default. Scott Hilburn is a funny guy!
I would like to see lots of other web comic sites as choices for gadgets. In fact, there should be some sort of aggregation service that creates such iGoogle gadgets and other delivery mechanisms (for handhelds, etc), as opposed to the typical static “theme park” site full of hundreds/thousands of web comics of varying quality. It would in effect be a “syndicate” for web comics.
Or maybe not?
I read about this site on John Chow today it’s called http://www.43marks.com – its like Igoogle but better cuz you can add you own bookmarks and the bookmarks can be websites not just gadgets and RSS feeds although you can upload your favorite RSS feeds too. Its free and totally customizable. Plus you don’t have to login to see your bookmars and RSS feeds
“Too bad they donâ??t allow users to add Sherpa comics into any of their setting. Either the site or the widget.”
Are you really suprised?
Alan:
1) RSS already kind of allows for this. I’m pretty sure that if there’s an RSS feed for something, you can add it to your iGoogle page.
2) I bet the iGoogle gadget API will allow you to write something that takes an existing comic-strip RSS feed and implement it as a gadget, with whatever bells and whistles the GoGomics gadget has.
Of course I’m positive that 99% of readers won’t bother with any of this. They’ll take default feeds and pages and leave it at that. This is why the original newspaper syndication model is so powerful, and why so many webcartoonists struggle to find an audience.
Nevertheless, RSS feeds via LiveJournal, iGoogle, and other social networking sites and aggregators are increasingly powerful tools, and are the principle distribution mechanisms for the new wave of uber-popular webcomics, including XKCD.
Gosh, I wonder how much money the cartoonists will make from this.
I’m guessing ZERO.
the current gadget is failing, and no one so far appears to care much…