As some commented on an earlier post, FusionCharts provides an easy way for people to hack together statistical graphics – sometimes not so attractively – and put the results on their websites. Widgenie serves as case in point. The concept of the application is all well and good. Upload some data and embed the “interactive” graphic on your blog, website, etc.
The realization of that idea however, needs some work. Aside from my difficulties logging on, changing my password, and non-flexible data upload, the widgets are, for the most part, just FusionCharts out of the box. Like the lollipop I made (below)?
[via ReadWriteWeb | Thanks, IA_chrissie]
the point of premium visualization web apps is to offer relevant visualization types that don’t exist in traditional tools, in a format which is compatible with web publishing, and in a way that takes advantage of an interactive environment.
so how does widgenie fare? there’s nothing really new about the types compared to, say, many-eyes. the technical solution used, flash hosted on their server and easily embeddable, is IMO the best. I have issues with interactivity though. I find the animations annoying. There’s no point in having an animated graph if it doesn’t deliver something a static graph couldn’t. Also I find the style too glossy. That wouldn’t be a problem if it were possible to select styles and keep a more sober approach, but that wasn’t possible when I last tested the service which was a while ago.
that being said I see lots of potential in the service if those glitches were ironed out.