Skip navigation.

Opera Widgets blog

The Gathering: Get your game face on

By Gautam Chandna. Wednesday, 22. March 2006, 14:58:33

, , ,

We're looking for a few good widgets - and widget developers. In conjunction with The Gathering, Opera wants you - either in the My Opera community or onsite at The Gathering - to submit your best widget. The winner receives the ultimate in high performance gaming equipment from Digital Impuls, the leading performance-computer speciality store in Oslo, Norway.

The computer wizards at Digital Impuls worked their magic to create this system, with a retail value of almost $6,000. It's armed with AMD Athlon 64 X2 cpu 4800+, 2Gb of Mushkin XP extreme performance memory, nVidia Geforce 7900GTX graphics and two hard drives: a Western Digital Raptor 74GB and a Seagate 400GB Sata 2.

The system comes with the newly released 20 inch widescreen gaming display, 20WGX2 from NEC. Sound is delivered through the superb Logitech Z5500 5.1 surround sound system. The computer casing is 100% aluminium, supplied by the award-winning Lian Li. The system is powered through the extremely stable and powerful MIST 600W power supply.

But how to control it, you ask? We're also throwing in, courtesy of Logitech and Digital Impuls, a Logitech G15 gaming keyboard and a Logitech G5 laser mouse.

This is truly a machine to be reckoned with.

Now that you know what you can win, here's how you do it! It's easy:
  • Make your best widget. Don't worry, we've provided lots of documentation to help you along
  • Zip the widget and submit it to widgetcomp [at] opera.com
  • Give us your name, your phone number and let us know if you're at The Gathering
  • We will contact the winners and put up their widgets on this blog!

So what are you waiting for? Join the competition today! Work fast though, because the competition ends on Saturday at 4:00 PM CET.


Disclaimer: Opera disclaims all liabilities and responsibilities regarding the widgets submitted as part of this competition. The participant agrees to bear all liabilities and responsibilites with regard to the widgets he/she submits as part of this competition. The authors retain copyright of submitted widgets, but widgets must either have a BSD-compatible license or be placed in the public domain.

Rules and regulations

Comments

shadowk 10. April 2006, 13:32

does this contesnt have a deadline?and if yes...when is it?
Too much prize info, to few contest details :frown:

elcid73 10. April 2006, 13:33

It took me somewhere around a minute of navigating that site to find what "The Gathering" is. Obviously- it's a 'gathering', but a literal gathering?

For anyone else who couldn't figure out what it was:

The Gathering is the second largest computerparty in the world. Last year, 5500 visitors attended the annual event which takes place at Vikingskipet Olympic Arena in Hamar, Norway, and lasts for five consecutive days.



gautam_chandna 10. April 2006, 14:14

Thanks for the info on The Gathering elcid73!

The winner of this competition will be announced at the end of 'The Gathering' which means - Sunday, 16th April.

Everyone is eligible to participate and you may submit as many widgets as you like!

It would be great if you could upload the widget to My.Opera.com as well. If you dont, then we will upload it using the 'Opera widgets' username after the competition ends and credit you in the description.


If you have any questions about this competition feel free to message me:)

johnnysaucepn 10. April 2006, 14:19

Can we submit upgraded versions of existing widgets, and if so, will they be marked down, or judged on how much improvement has been made?

Or are you specifically looking for brand-new code?

Guille 10. April 2006, 14:25

I agree with shadowk

What are you going to evaluate? Quality of code? coolness? usability?
What should we priorize?

Anyhow, woooohoooo!!! I will start coding now!!

gautam_chandna 10. April 2006, 14:35

To be honest we would prefer to see widgets we have not seen before, but as in every competition - they will be judged without any bias:)

As long as you claim ownership of the code submitted and the widget is the best - you win!

I have created a forum topic for anything that you might want to discuss.

* Edit *

We are going to evaluate everything from its visible coolness to the underlying code to its usability. My best suggestion would be to make it keeping in mind the perspective of the user and the coder.

Guille 10. April 2006, 15:12

Now that I know that johnnysaucepn is going to participate, I'm going to need to go beyond my own capabilities

johnnysaucepn 10. April 2006, 15:18

There are a lot better developers than me round here, and I'm pretty sure you're one of them!

I'm certainly going to enter, but what I have in persistence is usually let down by imagination...

wessan 10. April 2006, 17:26

nice nice ... if hadn't a lot of work i would try something, are there any conditions how the winner is chosen? ... i wish luck to competitors to bring some new cool widgets for opera users

WildEnte 10. April 2006, 19:02

I wonder how many football-world-cup widgets will be released because of this competition....

islandmuse 10. April 2006, 21:24

oh my, i wish i knew how to do widgets, I may be old (62) but i am a hard core gamer. Oh well, dream on. maybe i will learn widgets one day. LOL
good luck to all of you as I drool. aloha nui

mrspandex 10. April 2006, 22:09

I wish I had more time...

I have a couple ideas but I dont know javascript and I have almost no time this week.

I guess I'll just have to find some... I guess I'll be sleepy on Saturday.

Renatas 11. April 2006, 15:43

Ja ja :smile:

realGWolf 11. April 2006, 18:38

is there a new code? :eyes:

danielcs 11. April 2006, 21:28

Oh yeah.. I'm in for this one too.
Tight deadline but I'll see what I can do.

Already have a cool idea, now lets see if the widget architecture supports it or not.

Edit:
What I want to do cannot be achieved only using JavaScript, I need sockets. Can I do the dirty socket work in PHP or ASP.NET (something like a webservice) and just use my Widget to get the response from this webservice?

shadowk 12. April 2006, 06:36

yeah...good point..i just remembered that my widget will need some php...to make it work right...can i use it?

gautam_chandna 12. April 2006, 09:40

sure you can!! as long as its a widget that provides a service and users want it on their desktop - you can use whatever technology you want!

shadowk 12. April 2006, 11:10

great,excelent...:D

Aux 13. April 2006, 08:23

So little time! Blah! But I hope I'll make it! (:

nicomen 14. April 2006, 12:19

We have set up a channel you can join to get help with making widgets for the competition:

#tg.widgets @ EFNet or irc://irc.homelien.no/tg.widgets

See ya there :wink:

nicomen 14. April 2006, 17:37

No idea, and I'll probably never know as I don't use Windows :wink: What I like about Operas implementation though is that it is cross platform :wink:

anoos 16. April 2006, 08:17

that is right nicomen

dan1el 16. April 2006, 13:35

Where is the winners? =D

qicaispace 14. July 2006, 14:10

great,excelent... :smile:

Write a comment

You must be logged in to write a comment. If you're not a registered member, please sign up.