Wotsa Widget?

By David Shamah The Jerusalem Post, Friday, August 19, 2005

There's a theory floating around out these that says you can tell what a person is like by looking at their desk. As if! I can personally attest that "junk psychology" theories like that are exactly that - junk. Organized desks mean organized personalities? Nonsense; there are plenty of flighty people who can keep their desks clean. And the opposite holds true, as well; just having a messy desk does not mean your life is in disarray, and it also does not mean you are going to do a messy job when given a task.

Indeed, a messy desk can, and often is, a sign of superior intelligence. Lots of stuff to read or look at means lots of ideas, and lots of applying those ideas to find solutions for problems. Many busy people don't mind a desk in disarray, because they know exactly where everything is, and like to have the stuff they need at hand - instead of having to make extra time to open drawers, closets, or filing cabinets to get the document or item they want.

The same goes for desktops - the computer kind, of course. Some people have boring stretch of blue staring back at them when they turn their PC on, with a couple of required icons in the bottom right hand corner. How boring is that? Computer desktops, like refrigerators, are just crying out for decoration. Icons, wallpaper, and widgets go a long way to prettifying a plain desktop plane.

Widgets? Oh yes; I thought I'd be able to sneak that one past you, but you're a little too fast for me! Yes, I did say widgets, which is defined at dictionary.com as either "a small mechanical device," or "an unnamed or hypothetical manufactured article." What does that have to do with computer desktops, you ask? Nothing, but the Widgets I have in mind are a completely different animal.

Instead, the Widgets we're talking about, according to Yahoo, which now runs the Widget concession on the Internet, are "little guys that hang out on your screen and give you quick, easy access to favorite content." And indeed they are - Widgets, in the way Yahoo and their original manufacturer, Konfabulator, understand them, are mini-programs that you leave on your desktop, giving you instant access to all sorts of important or pointless information, such as weather, traffic, time, notes, games, computer information, and how many mosquitoes you can expect to encounter when you step outside - among many others.

But perhaps I should back up a bit. Widgets are little Javascript applications that use a special Java engine installed by the Konfabulator application, which you download from http://www.konfabulator.com or http://widgets.yahoo.com. The Java apps themselves are called, in Konfabulator terms, Widgets. The thing about Widgets is that the applications are attached to graphics, so they serve two purposes: One, they're functional and provide useful information, and two, they're nice to look at.

When you install Konfabulator, the systems sets up a number of Widgets to start off your collection, including a handsome analog clock, a slideshow viewer that displays all the photos in your default pictures directory, a weather forecaster, a stock ticker, and about a dozen other useful apps. Konfabulator creates a folder on your computer called My Widgets (any Widget you open appears on your desktop). You can turn them on and off at will, change the "skin," or even the Widget functions associated with each graphic.

One very cool thing about Konfabulator is that it's cross platform - between Windows and Macintosh (OS X), an uncommon combination. Konfabulator Widgets are very similar (some say a little too similar), in fact, to the applications available for the Mac Dashboard, which are also called Widgets. The apps for each program, however, are not necessarily compatible with the other one. And Dashboard only comes with OS X 10.4 (Tiger), which costs $129 - while Konfabulator is now free, having been bought out by Yahoo (more on that below).

The Widgets gallery at the Konfabulator Web site, as well as other sites (such as http://modules.deviantart.com/konfabulator) have hundreds more Widgets available for you to download an install. At the Konfabulator site (http://www.widgetgallery.com), you can download the aforementioned mosquito monitor ("Just enter your U.S. zip code using the Preferences, and hope for the best"), traffic cameras, maps, and conditions for many U.S. and some European cities, Widgets to control system volume or CD and MP3 choices, a keyboard character translator to convert keystrokes between languages, mail monitors, mini search engines (Yahoo, Google, books, Amazon, eBay and dozens of others), currency calculators - the list goes on and on. Konfabulator's Widgets give you access to all sorts of functions you would have to open numerous programs for, saving you lots of memory - and the need to install all sorts of utilities, thereby saving your system and hard drive from being gunked up with all sorts installers, DLLs, etc.

And Widget writing is not beyond the ken of the average Widget user. The Konfabulator site has a not too difficult to follow tutorial on the basics of XML and Javascript (the essential ingredients in Widgets), and gives you step by step instructions in how to write a Widget, so if you wanted to add traffic updates and maps on the Ayalon that appear at the highway's Web site (http://www.ayalonhw.co.il), you would just substitute that site for the one in the example, upload it to the Widget Gallery, and share your new invention with the rest of the Konfabulating world.

Konfabulator used to cost $20, but as mentioned, Yahoo bought out Pixoria, the makers of the program, and is now giving it away for free (anyone who paid for the program will get a refund from Pixoria, says the Konfabulator site). While it can be used for any purpose, Konfabulator just seems like it was made for the Internet, and with Google getting all the headlines for its acquisition of high quality third party shareware that it turns into freeware (like Picasa), Yahoo felt it was time to strike back and start expanding its own on-line empire.

Now that Konfabulator owned by Yahoo, users can expect to see it integrated with the Yahoo services they've come to know and love, like Yahoo Mail (which users will notice has been bumped up to give each user a 1 GB mailbox, to compete with Gmail's 2+ GB mailboxes), finance site, and others (rumor has it that a certain well known Internet telephony application that allows free phone calls is next, but don't quote me).

The bottom line is that competition between the Web giants is only going to give consumers access to more and better services. Just last week Microsoft (who would like to see its MSN services dominating the Internet) introduced Virtual Earth (http://virtualearth.msn.com) which lets you display high resolution or road maps with labels and layers, and locates businesses and institutions, and displaying driving directions and other information. Both Google and Yahoo already have map services (http://maps.google.com, http://maps.yahoo.com), and although Yahoo's is not as fancy as the other two's, the company will doubtless come out with something more sophisticated - because there's money to be made supplying information like this on the Web, as well as on PDAs, cell phones and other devices all three companies are working hard to provide services for. Meanwhile, users get to benefit from the race to be number one. Maybe someone wants to write a Widget showing which one of the three is in "first place" every day?

ds@newzgeek.com