Technorati cloud widget .... a widget!

Gathering information, data if you will, for one of my ALA poster sessions this morning I noticed that Technorati has updated their web site. It is very visually appealing and seems to have ordered the information in a way that is easy to navigate. Though not a big fan of the new sign in pop-up box, I’m wondering how it will function on my dinosaur computer with modem at home, I was able to successfully login.

Surfing around the site for possible widgets (it’s a sickness) I hit pay dirt. Among the various Technorati Tools provided is a blog widget that will allow users to place a Technorati tag cloud representative of their own tags in their blog. I have tried this before without much luck but decided today might be the time it works.

I clicked on the blog widget icon and received the ubiquitous 404 error message: “Sorry! We have a zillion pages, but not that one.” (Snarky remark alert; a brand new site redesign should not have broken links on prominent pages.) Not to be deterred, I used the menu bar above the options with success.

I inserted the code in my blog around 11:15am this morning. With the web site’s admonitions to be patient in mind, “when you first install this widget on your blog, it will take us a few minutes to build a custom widget with your blog's top tags, but then after that we'll keep it up to date for you, “ I hesitantly refreshed. Indications the cloud might appear were present. On the sidebar it says: View blog top tags and it links to my page on Technorati and my tag cloud on their site. But a half hour later I still don’t see my cloud on my blog. I’m not sure what “a few minutes” means. So I will let the widget sit and gather information until I return from lunch.

Update: It's after 3:00 pm and still no luck with this particular widget. I went back to Technorati, copied the script, and entered the information a second time. Again, clicking on the link takes me to the Technorati page for this blog, but I have no cloud. Hope springs eternal, I'll check back later this afternoon and hope for progress. It just should not be this difficult ...

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Update: 5/25/07
Instead of ranting about this on another post I will update one last time. I am noticing blogger is making a slight change in the order of elements within the widget's javascript; specifically the color details. This really should not effect the widget itself, but as of this morning the cloud has not appeared.


Tags: Blog widgets, Technorati widgets, Tag cloud, Technorati