No, “widget fever” is not some odd affliction you get from visiting a jungle, nor is it a new Will Smith song.

Through the past few weeks, I’ve been redesigning the Web site for the online (and soon to be hard-copy) magazine I publish. It has been a trying experience which took three different tries with three different software packages to find one that my feeble brain could figure out and SUCCESSFULLY Web publish. When I finally figured out how render HTML packages from outside companies (read: the Amazon book links you can embed in Web sites), it was like I had reached Web nirvana. Through that process, I then tripped over widgets, and now I’m spending my free time looking across the ‘Net for relevant widgets for my site.

I must be calm. I must remain design-minded and not go crazy, posting widgets every which way from Tuesday.

So why am I rattling on about this? Think about it. Widgets are a great PR tool. Take a look at the Kansas Health Foundation’s “Change Something” campaign. To empower participants in their health-focused effort, the KHF provided a widget with a dual purpose: participants could upload their suggestions about changing a health habit, and then download a widget to be placed on their desktops, etc., to be fed (no pun intended) by the KHF with new suggestions daily. It’s interactive. It’s colorful. It’s individualized. It gives the KHF a way to build one-to-one relationships with participants and potential participants without getting in their faces. GENIUS!

In the Google universe, these widgets are actually called “gadgets,” (gadgets, widgets, thigamabobs, whatever) and as a Web publisher (even to your blogs) you can choose from a plethora of gadgets to use: CNN, Mayo Clinic, New York Times…heck, you can even post a language translator to your site. Widgetbox has a lot of fun, though not necessarily relevant to PR, widgets, including the effervescent PacMan game, a cat which responds to your mouse pointer, and a way to integrate YouTube videos (by keyword) to your Web site without complicated coding.

Now I feel compelled to go out and create my own widget (or gadget or whatever I shall call it)…but about what? Who do I want to reach? Why is this relevant, and what’s the demo of my audience?