[Search-l] Widgets

[Mark (Markie)]

I know i havent been to active round here recently (been really busy, sorry
:-( ) but one thing that i have noticed on the mailing lists that really
interested me is the widgets ideas.  IMO these are really key things that,
shouldnt :-p, be too hard to implement. Ive had a brief look at one of the
widgets which i look for alot, which is weather (although i dont know why,
it always seems to be rain :-p)

NWS / NOAA provide an XML output of weather for all US cities and most
international cities, and with it being a US gov org all its content is
therefore PD and totally free to use and copy etc (not a lawyer though).
this we could then implement easily using a JS call from the search var,
with or without looking for a "weather: XXX" keyword and then output next to
the search results, maybe below the adverts.  this could also be JS
implemented to be hide able etc with more widgets....... the problem with
NOAA IMO is that it requires calls to use lat/long co-ordinates for the
calls, thus required more geo-location stuff which makes this harder and
harder.

so then i looked for alternative APIs which could be used and came up with
weather.com's feed.  this requires registration, but is then free to use but
requires 5 links back and a logo, which may or maynot be acceptable to us??
this however does give the ease of being able to call by city name, removing
the need for geo-locations stuff.

however the balance needs to come between coding and technical possibility
and the "freeness" of the content.

also im guessing there are many different ideas for widgets so also please
feel free to give thoughts on this one, and any others that spring to mind
as being wanted.  my thoughts were: Open Street Map contents when searching
locations (ie a map of the location in the world/country/are when searching
for a city) or cinema times for jimbo etc etc

regards (and apologies for the lengthy message)

mark
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