Have you ever wanted to tell a friend about a really great game gadget on iGoogle or help someone set up a gadget exactly the way you have it? You can do those things on iGoogle using the Share menu, but what you couldn't do before today was share a gadget and collaborate with your friends on the same gadget data. This means you can now view and edit gadgets just like Google Docs.
A simple gadget to share is one for sticky notes. Enter a grocery list, share it with family members, and everyone can see and edit the same list. If you like crosswords, but like me need plenty of help, just share your crossword with a friend and they can work on it with you.
Here's how in three steps:
Step 1: Click the triangle on the gadget you want to share and click "Share this gadget."
Step 2: If you're a Gmail user, just pick the friends you want to share with or type in their email addresses.
Step 3: Decide whether you want to let your friends edit your gadget content or just view it on their iGoogle page and click "Send invites." Your friends will get an email from you and they will be able to see a preview of the gadget in the email and add it to their own iGoogle page.
So go ahead, check out the full list of gadgets with this feature and give it a try. We've enabled this feature for some of our more popular gadgets to encourage collaboration, but of course it doesn't make sense for every gadget. For example, you can share a weather or movie listings gadget with a friend, but data sharing is not enabled - your friend gets an independent copy of the gadget, as before.
Developers, check out the Gadgets API Blog to learn how to incorporate this feature in your gadget with one line of code.
We would love to know what you think.
