I have assembled for your blogging pleasure a list of widgets that are fun, informative and useful.

Before we begin, one caveat: While widgets can add much to our blogs, we must alway use with care. Too many widgets can slow loading time and add unnecessary clutter.

With that in mind, here are some widgets to play with:

1. Blogcatalog - See who has visited your blog. Another feature is the social networking like ability to send broadcasts  and messages as well as start conversations with your contacts. Beware of spammy sites "friending" your blog. See my sidebar for example.

2. MyBlogLog - Same concept as Blogcatalog without as much social networking. It does offer a unique feature to allow you to join a blog's community automatically upon a preset number of visits. Much less useful for those looking to use the system for spam because it doesn't have as many social networking features. Also on my sidebar.

3. Entrecard - A newer concept, this widget allows bloggers to drop their "card" - a 125X125 image linking to their blog - when they visit other blogs that use Entrecard. Widgets are designed to advertise approved cards at the discretion of the blog owner. Bloggers earn advertising credits by visiting other blogs and dropping their cards. At publication date, it is not possible to have more than one blog registered in an account, but updates to the system have been promised to make it possible soon. Bloggers who wish to register multiple blogs at this time must use multiple email addresses to sign up. I'm currently using it only on my personal blog.

4. Blogrush - This widget offers up titles and blog names of four post at a time from a similar category as you pick for your blog. The idea is that you appear on other bloggers widgets in exchange for page impressions and click through on your widget. While plenty of bloggers are still using it, I jumped ship after several months of poor results.

5. Amazon.com - The original affiliate program for web masters offers a myriad of widgets to link your posts to products in their catalog. If you blog about books as often as I do, you'll find them invaluable. It doesn't hurt to know if your review inspires your reader to get whatever you talked about, you'll be rewarded with a cut of the profit. For an example, check out my post about Stephen King's short story collection Skeleton Crew.

6.  Scoreboard by SpringWidgets - This scoreboard is powered by Fox Sports and offers scores for games across the the major US sports leagues. SpringWidgets has thousands of widgets, but this is the one I have experience with is sports scores. My husband Chris has it on his blog. My favorite thing is that the widget sizes can be customized to fit any blog perfectly. Even if sports isn't your thing, SpringWidgets likely has some useful babble for your blog.

7. Spock.com - Half people search engine, half social networking, Spock.com provides widgets to highlight search results. Here is one with the result when you search for little old me:




8. Yahoo! Answers - My personal guilty pleasure of a social networking and forum combo offers a widget to display your personal questions and answers. As you can see, I answer more often than I question.

9. Twitter - Twitter gives users a place to send short text message type update to be viewed by your group of friends. You can actually Twitter from your cell phone via text message. It's a great way to keep your online crew updated from when away from the computer.  Allow me to admit, I do not Twitter or text message. Rest assured, I've found an example at Simple Kind of Life (scroll down a bit).

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