Blogger Widgets

Kirk, my favorite Blogger tweaker, wrote a very simple yet elegant code that sends you to a random post from a Blogger blog. It uses Blogger's JSON API and it's available as a widget if you upgraded to layouts or as a JavaScript code easy to paste in your template. I placed a link that uses this code in the right sidebar and it's addictive. Because it can send you to any post from the entire archive, it's a cool way to (re)discover a blog.

I wouldn't have thought many people would think something like this would be useful, but a recent post on Techcrunch goes ape over Wordpress having a 'random post' widget now. I figured if Wordpress has one, New Blogger should as well.

Kirk wrote even more complicated widgets for Blogger, like Picasa Web slideshow, archive calendar and the spectacular tag cloud. If only someone could build an automatic way to upgrade the classic templates to Blogger's new layouts.

Update: Blogger's API has difficulties, so you won't see a "random post" link in the sidebar. The error returned is: "Too many instances of callback".