Kidz Rage !

Google Inc. announced the winners of the Google Desktop Gadget Contest. The 3 top place finishers split $8,000 and were decided upon by a panel of judges based on popularity, visual appeal, use of new features and creativity. The first place winner received $5,000, $2,000 for second place, and $1,000 for third place. Despite a long list of honorable mentions, including Ron Huang’s gadget for Hot or Not that allows you to easily submit your ratings for photos of users from hotornot.com or simply view a slideshow, the 3 top place winners were the following:

• diGGGadget by Marius and Yannick Stucki – Stay on top of the latest stories from digg.com. Click on a few buttons and you’ll know why we think it’s so great. It also takes advantage of our advanced APIs to enable sharing news with friends plus personalization based on your interests.
• Multiplayer Reversi Game by Turhan Aydin – Immerse yourself in the fun game Reversi with this visually rich gadget. Not only can you play against the computer, but this gadget takes advantage of Google Talk API so that you can also play with your friends.
• Day/Night World Clock by Beatrix Gottanka – We couldn’t have designed a better world clock. Not only does this clock show you the local time, but there’s also a map that indicates whether it’s night or day at any given hour. And if you want options, this gadget has them.

Additional information can be found on TechCrunch’s weblog posting entitled, “Viewscore aggregates gadget reviews“.