If you think the alliteration in the title of this post is great, wait until you've read the content! Recently I've got into Google Gadgets, those little useful things you can put on your iGoogle homepage, use in Google Pages and Google Sites, add to Google Desktop, and that you can embed into any website using their syndication tool.

As I have two websites that could become very useful / fun Google Gadgets I set about writing them. The first was the Recipe Binder Google Gadget. This lets you search for recipes, explore recipes, and see the most recent and top rated recipes, and having this on the iGoogle homepage is really useful. I've embedded it below so that you can see how it looks and works. On this one all links go to www.recipebinder.co.uk, but on the iGoogle version you can change the setting to link to http://apps.facebook.com/recipebinder/ if you use that version.

Add the Recipe Binder Google Gadget to iGoogle now!Add to Google
Add the Recipe Binder Google Gadget to your web page now!

The second gadget is for Judge A Book By Its Cover - the great website no one visits! Hopefully this gadget is a more appropriate use of the main concept behind the website, turning JABBIC into more of a quick game on iGoogle than a destination for people. Again I've embedded it below so you can have a play.


Add the Judge A Book By Its Cover Google Gadget to iGoogle now!Add to Google
Add the Judge A Book By Its Cover Google Gadget to your web page now!

Writing a Google Gadget is fairly straight forward, as long as you have a good grasp of HTML and JavaScript. The CSS can be a bit temperamental, but you'll get there. The Google Gadget documentation is actually very good compared to some I've seen, so just get stuck in! I hope you like my gadgets, all questions and comments welcome.