SitePal’s Talking Widget

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Posted in » Advice to Businesses, Online Tools - by Ades on August 13th, 2009

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SitePal, a website that offers animated speaking avatars has came up with a new free widget now. The talking character widget can be integrated into your blog or used as a messaging tool to send voice mails to your friends.

See the demo below… now you can have your own welcoming Obama for your blog :) I like the way he follows your mouse cursor.

Share button at the bottom gives you many options to share your newly created widget with your friends. Options include Email, direct URL, Facebook, iGoogle etc.

Some Suggestions

I think the idea of providing free talking characters i.e widget is great. Whether people will use it or not on their blog that is a different thing. However, I think incorporating the following suggestions into their next versions will increase the chance of people using the widget on their blog.

  1. Provide different sizes
    Especially compact widgets… web space is a scarce thing, more so on popular blogs and websites. If possible bloggers would rather monetize the space as much as possible than putting a widget that covers the half of the sidebar. Therefore providing smaller widgets will increase the chance of adoption by popular blogs.
  2. Hide text fields from the finished widget
    When you are done with the widget and sent it to your friend (or implemented it in your blog) currently it shows all the text fields and the message that you typed in. I think all the text fields should be hidden on the finished widget at first, so that the widget looks clean and more appealing. Putting a small button Create Widget somewhere could show the text fields and all the editing options (on compact widgets clicking on the button could take the user to new page).
  3. Make it gravatar compatible
    Talking to Gravatar.com guys could yield a positive result for SitePal. How about talking gravatars from Gravatar dot com?
  4. Establish some writing rules for correct pronunciation
    I was having trouble making the character to pronounce my name properly. Just typing Ades was resulting in characters pronouncing it as Aids, Aedis, Ade, etc based on which character you select. Perhaps they could provide some commands where you can ask the character to pronounce the word or specific letter as in alphabet or in certain words. Like Ades in Umbrella etc.
  5. Mute it first
    I am not sure about you guys but I don’t like anything auto-playing on websites when you enter. Be it a music or talking character. I strongly believe that the widget should have a play button and should be mute at first. It’s the same principle as in auto-expanding banners and pop-under windows… most people hate them.


Website: SitePal.com
Widget Page: www.sitepal.com/ttswidgetdemo

P.S Their latest project www.audiopal.com/

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17 Responses to “SitePal’s Talking Widget”

  1. By DSL on Aug 13, 2009

    This is a great product and I had fun messing around with what Obama was saying, but all kidding aside. This is a great widget. I am also bothered by auto play so a method to turn the auto play off would be nice!

  2. By Fatin Pauzi on Aug 13, 2009

    Now, this is the first time I hear Obama speak Malay. :D

  3. By South Tampa Homes on Aug 13, 2009

    Good widget of text to speech. I like this widget. Thanks for information.

  4. By Best CSS Gallery on Aug 13, 2009

    Great find, this widget seams to be really good

  5. By living room furniture on Aug 13, 2009

    wow! i love the widget its very funny!

  6. By how to make money on Aug 13, 2009

    It’s great free tool. However the message length that they allow is very small. If they allowed for more talk in the widget it would be an excellent tool for lead capture or landing pages.

  7. By About blogger on Aug 14, 2009

    Thanks this widget is really good

  8. By SEO Tips on Aug 15, 2009

    I like the widget, but it may be influenced by my regard for Obama, I really like him. I hope they have a widget available for a drupal site.

  9. By Get 3 Quotes | 3Q on Aug 16, 2009

    I think that they’ll have the best success with this if they associate themselves with gravatar.com

    Maybe facebook comments is another option, the facebook crowd is more likely to sign up for this, as they’re used to playing with new toys on facebook all the time.

  10. By Karaoke hire on Aug 17, 2009

    It seems very different and effective for my blog. I like to use it.

  11. By Todays Freebies on Aug 17, 2009

    is that mr obama any pretty cool tool

  12. By living room furniture on Aug 18, 2009

    i really like the widget, I have fun everytime i see that looking at my mouse pointer.

  13. By Paul on Aug 20, 2009

    Nice looking widget. May have to put it to use on my site.

  14. By lz @ Ideas For Self Employment on Aug 29, 2009

    Can it be uploaded on video sites?

  15. By PS3 on Sep 16, 2009

    great plugin and a great idea , just hope people have the volume turned on on therepc,s when they come to your site.

  16. By Hair Growth Vitamins on Oct 15, 2009

    Hi Ades,

    This looks like a wonderful widget. I have a blog running very well, and I am not sure that whether this widget is going to add some value to my blog or not.

    However I have a plan of introducing a new blog in coming three months, I think I can try it and test it there.

    I will give my review soon. Thanks for introducing it.

  17. By fences on Dec 2, 2009

    Checking out some old posts on “online tools”. I’ll speak honestly and say that I really do not like that widget.


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