We've Got Gadgets!

When myAOL launched just over a year ago, our goal was to open up the platform to allow other companies, startups and independent developers across the world to build widgets for the site, populating myAOL with content and functionality that would hold personal appeal across broad and niche audiences. It took a little longer than we hoped (rolling out myAOL in 25 countries took up a bit of our time!) but... today we are thrilled to announce the launch of the new open developer site at: http://dev.my.aol.com.

The new site offers developers links to information and tools for building gadgets and the opportunity to submit existing gadgets to share via the myAOL Gadget Gallery, which already includes many gadgets built by the myAOL team, widget factories, and third-party developers.


Working with developers from Google and other members of the OpenSocial community to adopt the gadget spec ensures that developers
with existing gadgets are able to submit them to the myAOL Gallery, and makes it easy for widget factories to offer their developer communities a simple way to submit their work as well. For example, yourminis is now live with the ability to easily add any of their widgets to a myAOL page or submit them to the myAOL Gallery.

CONGRATULATIONS to the entire myAOL team – from Mountain View to Bangalore to Dulles!

THANK YOU to our colleagues at Google who have been so helpful throughout the process.


Our combined efforts have resulted in a variety of fun gadgets for the myAOL audience (with many more on the way!) and the creation of a site that will allow us to fill myAOL with more choices and more great content. Check out our post on the opensocial blog too!


Jen Consalvo
Director, Product Management, myAOL


Calling all Sport Fanatics!

The Olympic Games have gotten us all a little sports crazed. As the Olympics come to an end we need a way to channel all of that sports enthusiasm and we have the perfect way to do this! Take a look at our Sports Modules and pick which ones will work for you!

Choose from any of our USA Today Sports modules, ranging from NBA or NFL news to College Sports or Golf. Subscribe to the Sports Photo of the Day and see the most recent sports images each day! See the latest sports news from ESPN.com or read the blogs from AOL Black Voices: Casually Obsessed on your myAOL page. Check out the latest game scores with our CBS SportsLine Scores module. You can see the game scores for a variety of sports, from the previous two days, and then the game lineup for that day!

runnernew

scores

Visit our Sports Module Gallery to see more!

Recent Updates

We have some updates for you. We have added new themes! Simply click on the Themes link in the header, and you'll notice we've added a second page of new theme options. Of course, we'll be continually adding new themes:



We've also added new modules. One module I'd like to highlight is Pandora. Pandora is an online music radio service. They have a variety of great music radio stations! You can currently find this module under the "Recently Added" section or you can simply search our widget gallery for 'Pandora'.

A Look Into YourMinis

Let's take a brief and closer look at YourMinis, which AOL acquired last week. YourMinis create widgets for you to use on your blog, website, startpage, and desktop. Yes, all 4!

So how does it work?

First, go to the widget gallery, and let's choose the "YouTube Videos" widget which is currently under the Top Rated widgets:



Next, after selecting the widget, you will see a preview of the widget. In the grid view, select the "COPY ME" button to select your destination for the widget. You should see this now:




Next, you choose your destination for the widget. For example, if you are using Windows Vista, you will choose the Windows icon in the 3rd Row. Or, if you want to use it in FaceBook, you will select the FaceBook icon in the 1st Row. I will choose the first option 'Copy Embed Code', which will provide me an HTML code snippet and I simply just copy/paste the code into this blog entry. Each blog type differs in how they require you to embed HTML code, but many of the popular blogs are listed as default options (shown above).




Done!

**NOTE: currently, only a limited number of YourMinis work with myAOL. For the specific list of widgets, please view this previous blog post.

New Themes for myAOL!

We just launched a new feature for myAOL: themes. You can now select and choose your own theme to personalize your page. It has been a highly requested feature!

You can add your own theme by clicking on the Themes link in the upper right corner of the page, shown here:




Then, simply choose the theme that you prefer:



Please contact us if you would like to see any particular new theme. We will be adding new themes throughout the year - enjoy!

New Mail Modules

In addition to the AOL Mail module, you can now also add the Gmail Module and Yahoo Mail modules! Check them out if you have a Gmail or Yahoo account.

You can find the Gmail module here:



And find the Yahoo Mail module here:

Happy New Year!

Happy Holidays!

Welcome to the myAOL Blog

Welcome to the myAOL Blog We are pleased to have launched the myAOL Blog in preparation to launching some exciting new updates to the myAOL product. Welcome aboard, as we plan to use this blog to introduce you to our product team, keep you updated on product news, analysis and features as well as give perspective on industry news related to personalization on the web.

Additionally, we would like to use this blog as a way to better connect with our users as we look for feedback about the myAOL product offerings. So please feel free to drop us a comment. While we will not be able to address every comment and email we will definitely be reading it and taking it into account as our users are important part of the myAOL team.

Please subscribe to feed updates by clicking the myAOL button or subscribing to email updates via the "Subscribe" module on the upper right side of this blog.

Cheers,
Frank Gruber
myAOL Product Manager

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