Didn't get a chance to sleep in as much as I normally would on a weekend. Kids were up early & playing around downstairs, so I went ahead & got up with them. Ate some cereal, wondered at how in the world the Hawks beat the Celtics yet again, and then sat down with my coffee to peruse some of my favorite Internet stops (something I don't get much time to do anymore). Somehow I got onto the ESPN Widget Center and click through page after page of interactive content that they have enabled people to pull and post onto their own websites, Facebook profiles, and the like. Really cool stuff and worth a look if you're a sports fan.

Something got triggered in my brain and I looked back through my Delicious bookmarks to find a site that a friend of mine told me about several months ago. It's called Sprout and it basically allows you go build interactive, high-quality widgets for free. Here's a quick intro from their homepage:

Sprout is the quick and easy way for anyone to build, publish, and manage widgets, mini-sites, mashups, banners and more. Any size, any number of pages. Include video, audio, images and newsfeeds and choose from dozens of pre-built components and web services.

You can embed your sprouts on any Website or leading social media sites, include MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Friendster, Blogger, Typepad and more.

It's incredibly easy & a lot of fun to play around with! In about an hour I had a Catalyst Sprout built - you can see it (for now at least) about halfway down in the right side column on the homepage of this site. One really cool feature is that once the sprout has been placed onto a webpage, it is automatically updated whenever you update the Sprout. Great way to get your content out & about on the web and still maintain control over what it looks like/feels like/acts like.

I'm sure I'll play around with it some more when I have a chance. For now the sprout allows you to catch the latest Catalyst blog posts, articles & videos and publish them on your own site!

I set it up to fit into the sidebar here, but if you'd like to see another size just let me know. It's pretty easy to resize things & I'd be happy to shoot you one that fits better on your site.