Yahoo! Widgets

by Karl Rees
Saturday, April 29, 2006 - 17:13
Updated on Thursday, August 2, 2007 - 20:05

Apparently they've been around for quite some time, but this week I discovered Yahoo! Widgets--a great way to make your desktop more colorful and informative. Thanks to Yahoo! Widgets I've got live weather, a calendar, alarm clocks (including a grandfather clock that chimes at every hour), a memo pad, a news reader, a to-do list, a day planner, and the latest baseball and basketball scores all sitting right there in the background of my desktop--it's like they're part of the wallpaper or something.

It really comes in handy. Instead of having to open up a ton of applications and browser windows to find the information I need, I just glance at my desktop.

All you have to do is go the site, download and install the Yahoo! Widget Engine, and then search for widgets to install and download. I recommend the following:

Latest Weather (Pre-installed)
Day Planner (Pre-installed)
Multimedia News Reader. My favorite widget. I just point it to news feeds from sites like CNN and ESPN and the Rees Family website, and it tells me whenever there's new headlines, gives me a short summary of the articles, and, if I click on the headline, takes me to the full article.
Zoomy Dock - Gives you a little dock at the bottom of the screen like they have on Macs
Gmail Monitor
Memo Pad
MLB Scores
NBA Scores
Info Bar
Grandfather Clock

Comments

Sat, 04/29/2006 - 19:24
Dave Thorup (not verified)

Re: Yahoo! Widgets

You could just get a Mac and use Dashboard. ;-) Karl would never do that though.

BTW, the Yahoo! Widget Engine (what a horrible name) was originally known as Konfabulator and debuted as a Mac application.

Sat, 04/29/2006 - 19:53
Karl Rees

Re: Yahoo! Widgets

But then I'd have to pay for overpriced hardware just so I could buy software to run Windows on top of OS X :)

Yeah, I'm aware of their background--but if Yahoo had never bought them, I don't think I'd have ever heard about Konfabulator (or have been willing to hand over control of my desktop to a program without a major backer). It's the sad truth for any product. You can make the best product in the world, and no one but enthusiasts will ever use it unless you get a major company backing it.

Sat, 04/29/2006 - 23:30
Wayne Madsen

Re: Yahoo! Widgets

I've been using the Yahoo!Widgets engine for about three months now and my co-workers have been using it for much longer. FYI: it is a very unstable program. Even the basic widgets which are created by Yahoo! aren't stable and will crash frequently, without any reason: they just won't load. I still use the engine because they are handy (I like the Dilbert widget, the calender, the picture frame, the rss live feed, the cpu monitor, and the weather widget), but I just figured you should know about their weaknesses and poor code.

Tue, 05/02/2006 - 08:33
Karl Rees

Re: Yahoo! Widgets

I think the Engine itself is pretty stable. The problem is people who develop bad widgets. I've had to stop using several widgets that I thought were pretty cool because they had memory leaks or ate too much processor power or had other problems. The widgets I have on my desktop now are very stable.

Wed, 05/03/2006 - 10:38
Wayne Madsen

Re: Yahoo! Widgets

When I only use widgets coded by Yahoo (that come with the widget engine) at work and the engine still crashes occasionally. It took it a couple months before this started to happen, but it still does. Hopefully you'll have better luck than I have.