Web Worker Daily

Widgenie calls itself “the all-powerful data visualizer.” While that’s stretching things a bit, it does offer a way to get decent-looking data graphics online - with some promising features for the future. After creating a free account (with a signup form that requests more information than most) you end up in their web-based widget builder. There are two basic activities here: upload a data file (Excel or CSV) and customize its data, then build a widget that displays the data as a table, text cloud, pie chart, and so on. After creating a widget, you can embed or link it to your own site, or publish it to iGoogle, Blogger, or Facebook.

The whole process is terribly simple, and the resulting charts are attractive. You can refresh your data at any time, changing what’s shown in widgets that you’ve already embedded. More intriguing, though, are features promised for the future: data feeds from their partners and the ability to use Google Docs or Amazon Simple DB as data sources (thus opening up the possibilities of collaborative widget publishing). If you have data to display, they’re worth a look.