Thing 12

I added Polaroid Puzzle from Widgetbox to my blog and what annoyed me is that I have to pay in order to remove the "Get widget" button and to avoid having ads populate my blog. I thin this is the tradeoff for free onlined stuff that troubles me the most. In his excellent new book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price, Chris Anderson shares wonderful insights on the new expectations that consumers have now that the cost of processing, bandwidth and storage are nearly negligible. One of the expectations is that Web 2.0 tools will resemble Flickr more than Widgetbox. I expect to have a less functional version of an application for free and to pay a freemium in order to enjoy the most refined version of the same app. What I think is less than honest is to lure me into adding a banner ad masquerading as a widget in order to defraud an even larger audience. The cost outweighs the benefit for me. I encountered the same problem when I initially added the Simpsons Quiz to my blog. Because the preview window in Blogger works poorly, you only realize that you have been suckered after you hit save. Of course you can remove the widget, but what I would prefer is informed consent from the get-go with transparent disclaimers about the commercial nature of the app. I think there might be a market for testing beta versions of widgets without the shameless self-promotion by developers and their marketing departments.I decided to leave the widget on my page for now as a kind of cautionary tale: CAVEAT EMPTOR and of course CAVEAT NON-EMPTOR in this radical new digital economy that is sullying our best intentions and pimping our best ideas.