If you can't tell as per my previous two posts, we're really excited about these highly interactive sports widgets that we built for TMS.  I had a chance to sit down with Doug Furcht, a Software Engineer for NewsGator's Media & Consumer Products, to talk about some of the (fairly complex) technical issues behind these new widgets as well as a few other topics. Here's our conversation:

• Josh: These sports widgets seem to be some of the most complex we've done before. What were some of the challenges in building them?
• Doug: Probably the largest obstacle was just getting familiar with someone else's data. Everything in these widgets are driven by the data coming from TMS -- lists of sports, all teams for those sports, and all schedules for those teams. It's a lot of data and it's difficult to work with until you've got your head around it.

• Josh: This is one of our first customizable widgets in the sense that you can add your own teams to track.  How are one's selections 'saved'?
• Doug: Yes, you can add any team from any league that the widget is configured to show. The users selections are saved locally in a persistent cookie.

• Josh: What's a feature you're particularly proud of developing?
• Doug: I'm particularly pleased with the vast number of configuration options and the ease in which these options can be configured. All of this is achieved through a management console where the widget's settings are defined -- such as local teams, local television stations, ad placements, etc. The console then builds a special block of code (the widget) based on these settings.

• Josh: Are there any new technical aspects you've learned from creating these widgets that you can apply to future ones?
• Doug: The TrimPath templating engine that lies at the core of widget framework is very powerful and the knowledge I now have about how it works will be useful in future products.

• Josh: Are you happy with the end result?
• Doug: In retrospect there are things I would have done differently during development (as there always are) but I'm really excited about how this project turned out.

• Josh: Finally, since these are sports widgets we're talking about, I have to ask you what your favorite teams are to watch.
• Doug: I prefer to play Ultimate Frisbee.  But, if I had to watch sports on TV, it would have to be either the Nuggets or the Dolphins.