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The pages and details are available at http://www.apple.com/itunes/myitunes/

In a very nice touch it also states that "You can also use the My iTunes feed with any standard RSS or ATOM feed reader. Most feed readers require that you simply paste the feed URL in a special section to view your updated activity."

Interestingly for a company that has convinced YouTube to format videos previously in Flash to the H.263 format, the new widget is in fact Flash based and requires a "Flash-enabled website, including most blogs and social-networking profiles"

The process is easy. You log in to your iTunes account and click on the "Enable" button. After agreeing to let Apple access your account information on the iTunes store only for the purpose of giving you "My iTunes" information to have listed in your widget.

You then explain which of the three options you want to display information on (purchases, favourites and/or reviews) and then (once you click a button) you are taken to a web page where you choose what style and size you want for the widget. You can then click a button to copy the HTML that you post into a website or copy the URL for creating an RSS feed.

For the purposes of a demonstration I decided to create a widget showing my recent purchases. It was an incredibly easy process and one that I have absolutely no doubt thousands of web developers and bloggers are going to use.

It is a very interesting move on the part of Apple, who (with the release of iWeb 08) obviously have begun to appreciate the power of web-based widgets. This move is an excellent way both of promoting iTunes and showing Apple as a company that continues to embrace social networking and web 2.0 functionality.

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