What I would prefer is the ability to sort widgets by author simply and easily from the "widgets" page.  Yes, you can do it by clicking on a widget you like, but that diminishes the "authorship" of it which, I agree, is important.  I believe that the success of the Chumby is intricately related to the success of those coding for the Chumby and by all means, those who do it really well should be recognized for it.  I, too, would like the ability to know how many instances of a widget are installed, even though I've yet to write one.  I'd even welcome the opportunity to "bump" a widget that I find particularly cool, but which has been buried in the miasma of recently uploaded "cowbell" tripe.

Myridom: your widgets kick ass.  I would welcome an email from Chumby Industries telling me when you, one of my "favorite authors," uploaded a new widget.  If Chumby were to give me a summary of "favorite" activity once a week, or throw me an RSS feed, I would be very happy.

Sumpin' to think about...

Seth

I agree its a neglected area, the feed back mechanism is not fleshed out.

I imagine it's a balancing act between widget developers getting email  and getting no information at all.

Also I think in the spirit of open source that the Chumby is sorta built on, there should be an easy way to publish code so we can make better or more customized widgets.

I added an About screen to the configuration page to one of the widgets I published. Thats about it.

I think if someone likes a widget of mine, they could just click my name in the developer section of the widget overview to see my other contributions.

As they say, but I feel very different, I do not know is the issue of data or other reasons.