hollowcube mini-blog reader by Michael Gunn can also be found on were-here. It let’s you read recent entries of other blogs without leaving the gutter. I found the interface intuitive and easy to navigate …more info.

Greg Burch has a different approach. He includes horizontally scrolling tciker for headlines. I have to admit that it took me a second to figure out how to switch feed because the popup menu with the ‘go’ button felt so much like HTML UI that I wasn’t sure it controlled the text below. It can be a challenge when we embed rich UI in the page how to indicate what clicks will change the info on the page vs. taking you to a different page.

(via JD’s list of SWF blog widgets)

Also notable, is Joi Ito’s gutter which is a DHTML variant that provides a list of categories that expands with list of links or pictures.