Yahoo! has bought Konfabulator

The move into widgets

[trillianjedi]

The widgets will draw upon information and services already on Yahoo's Web site without requiring a browser to see it. The material instead is displayed through an animated icon on the computer desktop.

.....Yahoo plans will give away the Konfabulator software that empowers the applications. Konfabulator had been charging $20 for the software. Anyone who bought version 2.0 of the software since mid-May will be given refunds, said Konfabulator CEO Arlo Rose.

[detnews.com...]

The battle for desktop space just moved up a notch.

We await a counter by MSN and Google....

[martinibuster]

The way I see it, it's a move in the direction of making more Yahoo information accessible to the user in a personalized context. Surely beats MSN to the desktop.

Good move.

[EliteWeb]

wow, maybe apple should have purchased them :P

[travelin cat]

EliteWeb,
Konfabulators widgets are much better then the current Apple ones, but there is some animosity between Konfabs creator and Apple:

[news.com.com...]

[rustybrick]

Funny EW. I guess Apple took something from M$'s game plan. ;)

[whoisgregg]

If there's a competition to get user created web-enabled content to the Windows desktop, I'd be more excited to hear that Apple is releasing a Windows version of Dashboard (bundled with iTunes, of course).

Considering that the Konfabulator community has built 1,042 widgets in the last two years and the Dashboard community has already built 909 widgets in the last two months, Konfabulator has clearly failed to capture developer interest. Dashboard has clearly trounced Konfabulator for the Mac user base. (No surprise there, every machine comes pre-installed with Dashboard.)

So, if Konfabulator's method (javascript/XML) wasn't grabbing developers and Konfabulator will have completely lost it's Mac user base in a year, and Yahoo is now going to give away Konfabulator anyways, why would Yahoo buy Konfabulator?

Hmm... Time to change the headline of this news story to:
"Yahoo hires Arlo Rose to develop Yahoo desktop apps, may use his old application for ideas"

[travelin cat]

Also, Microsoft has stated that widgets (with or without that moniker) will be a part of Vista, previously Longhorn, when it debuts late next year.

[weeks]

Also, Microsoft has stated that widgets (with or without that moniker) will be a part of Vista, previously Longhorn, when it debuts late next year.

By, which time, Yahoo will have their tools in the hands of millions already.

I have enjoyed Konfabulator's widgets. They are nifty in how they do their job and easily move out of the way.

[moltar]

I downloaded it once and didn't find any useful widgets at all. Uninstalled within hours.

[vincevincevince]

I don't know about you, but with the number of people specialising in selling and promoting widgets on this forum, Yahoo and Google will both have their work cut out.

[sun818]

Haha.

> I downloaded it once and didn't find any
> useful widgets at all. Uninstalled within hours.

Same. I downloaded it last night, tried it out for a few hours. Do you really need yet another system tray application? I think a web browser does most everything someone needs. We are inundated with excess noise - we don't need it on the desktop.

[travelin cat]

I have widgets on my desktop that I find very useful, one that tracks all of my stocks, another gives me weather updates (important here in the SF Bay area), another is a calendar that is always available, one shows Google Page Rank (on a Mac), yet another shows the interior temp of my G5 processor.

Others that I have but do not use regularly show movies currently playing within 10 miles of my house, one that shows the current offering at woot.com.....

It's endless.

[moltar]

travelin cat it's great that someone finds it useful.

I don't own any stocks.
I have a window in my room to check the current weather. Forecasts are only one click away (shortcut on the desktop).
Calendar one click away with web based scheduling and events.
PR is useless and you know it :)
I don't play games thus don't care about proc t.

[paybacksa]

finally, after so many years, we are seeing "push" coming back to the desktop? Slowly...one widget at a time?

[travelin cat]

Moltar,

Well, I'm not really going to address your rant as you obviously have no need for them, however, many people find them extremely useful as you can have them on your desktop for quick reference.

Also, we develop them, and have one that is making very good money, it has been downloaded thousands of times so there is a market for them that will keep getting bigger....

Why would Yahoo buy them if not?

[travelin cat]

paybacksa,

Good point... I had forgotten about "push" I remember that was "THE NEXT BIG THING" at Internet World back around '97 or '98....

Not enough bandwidth available then to make it work

[moltar]

travelin cat: you are right. I agree with you. I said that I am glad that some people find it useful. I hope Yahoo will do something good with it. Maybe I will use it too then.

[jezra]

I thought I would chime in on the usefullness of Konfabulator Widgets from my perspective. I personally don't find many widgets to be of use to me, but there are some that I use. But this isn't about me, this is about the visitors to my website. I offer a widget specifically for the members of my online community to help them stay up to date with my site. If 1% of my members find the widget useful, then I have accomplished what I intended: offering new features for my members, and increasing return visits to my site. Likewise, the exposure to Konfabulator is going to increase massively once Yahoo! starts marketing it. Hopefully, as people become more familiar with Konfabulator and are actively searching for widgets, they will stumble upon my widget and my web site. Free advertising is a good thing.

jezra

[travelin cat]

jezra, you have an excellant point, by offering your visitors another tool, you seperate yourself from the competition, this is exactly what we are doing now, and it works.

The only problem I see is that Yahoo hates sites that compete with it so any widgets that offer things such as travel, music etc, may not be allowed on the new Yahoobulator.....

[jezra]

travelin_cat:

by offering your visitors another tool, you seperate yourself from the competition

and this is exactly what Yahoo is doing by buying Konfabulator.

The only problem I see is that Yahoo hates sites that compete with it so any widgets that offer things such as travel, music etc, may not be allowed on the new Yahoobulator

I don't think Yahoo will limit the types of widgets that can be created for Konfabulator although I am sure that right now Yahoo is hard at work making the slickest, most useful widgets for movie, news, maps, etc., that will make all other similar widgets moot.