14 DAY TRIAL // After podcasting and RSS, a new technology is making its way to our desktop: the widgets. Introduced by Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, users have started to take widgets seriously once Yahoo acquired one of the most interesting platforms for widgets, Konfabulator, which is now free.
These applications are specifically designed to ease the access to functions like: RSS feeds, clock, weather forecast, and other visual information; their advantage is that they access the web pages without opening the browser.
Being easy to make, there is a wide range of sites developed independently that offer countless applications.
Until Mac OS X Tiger was released, the widgets seemed a business that belongs exclusively to platforms like Samurize, Konfabulator, DesktopX, Kapsules. Apple's last operating system introduced Dashboard, an engine for widgets, and suddenly everybody started to be more interested.
Yahoo plans to use them to increase the interactivity with its users, who will have quick access to some parts of the portal. Microsoft wanted to include widget support in Windows Vista, but it seems they have changed their mind.
Still, during the annual conference at Redmond, Microsoft's Financial Analysts Meeting, Yusuf Mehdi, Senior Vice President Microsoft, presented the new version of MSN Toolbar, which will allow developers to add widgets.
The missing piece of the puzzle is Google. If the leader of search engines adopts them, then we will witness the birth of the next hottest technology of the Internet.