Opera Widgets blog

Update: We have extended the deadline for submitting widgets to midnight February 3rd.

This Christmas the Web Applications team would like to bring some music into your lives. What better way to do that than to award the most killer widget with a Wii and Guitar Hero III!

A Nintendo Wii and Guitar Hero III

The Nintendo Wii is a great device, and has been sold out at stores around the globe for a year! Guitar Hero III has
commanded a lot of respect over the home entertainment market. it's a game you will love, just like us here at Opera

And two guitars!

The Web Applications team likes to have competitions. Infact we like to compete (and win ) so much so, that we're giving you two guitars so you can play with a friend! All you have to do to get this grand prize is: Make a killer Opera Widget.

In the past, we've had many people make widgets and our widgets repository now hosts over a thousand of them. Check them out for some inspiration! Think of widgets that you would like to use on your Mobile phone or ones that you would like to have on your TV. Imagine a world of desktop applications, made using Open Web Standards. What would you like to do today, online or offline? it's up to you!

T-Shirts every week!

The Giving season has begun and we are giving away two t-shirts every week to the best widgets for the previous week. When we award our users, we like to go all out.

Bonus points will be awarded for widgets that have a local aspect, e.g. widgets that have more value for someone living in a particular city. A good example are the existing widgets offering public transportation information for Oslo.

Until the 20th of January, we will take each new or updated widget and:

• Measure their coolness
• Observe their usefulness
• Check their Code quality
• Count download numbers
• and finally, look out for innovative developers

All widgets uploaded between the 20th of December 2007 and midnight 3rd of February 2008 will be judged, and the winner will be announced before the 8th of February!

Best of luck! and Godspeed

Our first themed Widget contest is now over. We want to do more contests in the near future, and I'm looking for feedback. What should the theme of our next Widget contest be?

Widgets for
a) sports lovers?
b) people who like to cook?
c) pet owners?
d) photographers?
e) people into personal fitness ?
f) (your suggestion here)

Please leave your comments on Choose Opera, and from the ones that sound good, I'll create a poll we can vote on.

We received a bunch of great early-bird submissions to our Travel Widget competition. I'm pleased to announce johnnysaucepn as the early-bird winner with his watchTheRoad widget.

Other early submissions were fun and useful as well, and the fact that watchTheRoad only covers the UK had us wondering a little bit if we should choose a different winner, but in terms of usefulness, coolness, and pushing the envelope of what you can do with widgets, watchTheRoad is the clear winner of this round.

johnnysaucepn will receive a Nintendo DS Lite and Opera for DS. Congrats!

Thank you to all participants, and tune in next week to see the final winners.

Here is the full list of early-bird submissions:

Danish to English
Find your hotel in Hungary, Budapest
Travel
Sheep Count
Flight Tracker
Free HotSpot Search
Multimap
watchTheRoad
Yahoo! Trips

You've waited long enough! A new widget contest begins today!

Here are the details:

We are looking for the best new widgets that will be useful for travelers. Whether it's travel for work, vacation, or something in between, we want widgets that are great tools for anyone traveling out of town--whether by car, plane, boat, train, or other means of conveyance. From widgets that help you keep track of travel expenses to widgets that pull useful information from travel-related sites to whatever else you can think of, we'd love to see it. (In the coming months, you can look forward to even more themed widget competitions.)

As usual, we're giving away nice prizes to the winners...

Prizes:

Keeping in the spirit of Opera being everywhere, we're giving the grand prize winner a Windows Mobile phone that runs Opera, perfect for browsing the Web on the road. (We'll work with the winner to make sure he or she gets a phone that is appropriate to his or her region and service provider)

The second place winner will win a Nintendo DS Lite with the Opera browser for DS.

5 runner-ups will get Opera goodie bags with t-shirts, pins, stickers, etc.

Special Early Bird Prize:

Speedy developers who submit their widgets one week ahead of the final deadline will have a chance to win the early bird prize: another Nintendo DS Lite with the Opera browser for DS. We'll award that to the best widget submitted at least one week before the final deadline. Of course, the early bird winner will still be eligible to win the Grand Prize.

Judging:

After the submission deadline, our experts will judge the submitted widgets on quality, usefulness, and the number of times it is downloaded. So be sure to promote your widget to make sure it gets the downloads it deserves!

The winning widget (and other outstanding entries) will be publicized far and wide so it will be used by scores of grateful travelers.

To enter:

Simply upload a widget here: http://widgets.opera.com/upload/ and send me a private message telling me about it.

(Send private message to Lawmune)

If it gets posted on our New Widgets Page within a few days after submission, that means it has been entered into the competition.

Deadlines:

1. The early bird submission deadline is May 28th, midnight (your time).

On midnight of June 2nd, the judges will make note of how many times the submitted widgets have been downloaded, and the early bird winner will be announced on June 4th.

2. The regular submission deadline is June 4th, midnight (your time).

On midnight of June 9th, the judges will make note of how many times the submitted widgets have been downloaded, and the final winners will be announced on June 11th.

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As a frequent traveler (for Opera), I'm really looking forward to the results!

Good luck!

Hidden away in the depths of widgets.opera.com lies some nice features. One of those are our RSS feeds. If you want to know about the very latest and greatest Widgets, be sure to add these two to your RSS reader!

New Widgets

Updated Widgets