Konfabulator's sale to Yahoo could be seen as a happy ending to a story about a little software company that had it's best idea appropriated by a larger company, but still came out fine. I ran Konfabulator for a while on my Mac, and while I barely make use of Dashboard now, I have to admit it is a handy thing to have.
The thing that strikes me about Dashboard and Konfabulator is that both have all the markings of a little revolution, similar to what happened with Flash. Flash started life as a very simple but nifty vector animation program, grew a whole API, and is become a geniune development platform. Now we have kid's edutainment devices that run Flash.
Yahoo! bought Konfabulator because they wanted more ways for their audience to be able to use their services. That includes, for now, Windows and Macs.
These applications take what was once web delivered data, and breaks it out into sub applications that work on the desktop. It breaks out of the browser dominated paradigm (the internet is more than a web browser). Just like the struggle with the desktop OS transition to mobile devices, the widget neatly breaks that up for the user, and at the same time offers additional opportunities for Yahoo.
What strikes me about widgets is how perfect they are for mobile applications, network delivered or not. They are simple and focused (at their best). They do one thing well. The best ones are lightweight, not sucking lots of resources in the background. They use fairly common technology, so anyone can play -- just a little xml, javascript and perhaps just a little magic.
I have to wonder about this. I have to wonder if Yahoo saw something beyond the desktop widgets, and saw an opportunity to take their data resources in a totally new direction.
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