Widgets are available at http://www.widgets.usatoday.com.

Three widgets are available so far, and they all revolve around the theme of travel (one gives updates on travel deals, another on airport and air travel news, the third one focuses on travel stories). Four more widgets are supposed to be launched soon, with news about pop culture, top headlines and celebrities.

All proposed widgets are aimed at generating revenue through advertising. Contrarily to text-based RSS feeds, these easy-to-implement tools can be readily monetized (although the paper’s spokeswoman said no advertisers had signed up yet).

NewsGator Technologies Inc., which licensed the widget technology to USA Today, has also delivered widgets to The Miami Herald and the San Jose Mercury News. But according to NewsGator, use of widgets that can be tagged on to user homepages is unprecedented for a national paper. The Wall Street Journal is currently developing similar ‘exportable’ widgets.

USA Today’s widgets work across many of the most popular blogging and social networking platforms, including Facebook, MySpace, Blogger and Typepad.

The Washington Post's widget enables users to follow press coverage of the presidential campaign and candidates' latest appearances. Users can customize what and who they want to hear from.

"We're measuring how much traffic gets driven back to our site, but that's not the only metric," said Jim Brady, executive editor of washingtonpost.com. "Having a cool widget on Facebook is a good thing for us, because it uses a small space to show off a feature that says you can get valuable info from washingtonpost.com."

Source: AP through European Journalism Centre - MediaPost