Widget Realm is proud to announce full support for mobile content - including media, polls & surveys, and galleries & slideshows. The new mobile functionality allows all content available through our desktop widget communication solution to be viewed via mobile devices. Now users can stay up-to-date with important information from anywhere!

De Smet Jesuit High School has launched De Smet Mobile (http://mobile.desmet.org) allowing students and parents to access important information from anywhere at anytime.

The new and expanded expanded functionality enables Widget Realm to service the fastest growing content markets available to consumers.

In “Widgets make a big splash on the Net“, USA Today recognizes the growing widget revolution among online users. USA Today notes that although “most Americans wouldn’t know a widget from a sprocket, widgets are all the rage on the Web.” Citing a JupiterResearch study, it notes that “awareness and use of widgets among online users, which was less than 5% in early 2007, has zoomed to more than 39% and 26%, respectively.” One of these widgets, as noted in the article, now has approximately 2.8 million daily users.

The growing popularity in widgets is due in part from the acceptance of widgets from many of the social websites, which give users the ability to interact with each other and to express their interests on their personal web pages, as well as widget platforms developed by Yahoo! and Google for developers.

What bodes for the future of widgets?

Plenty. We agree with Martin Green’s (VP of business for Meebo) comment in USA Today that “If 2007 was the year for widgets, then 2008 will be the year advertisers reallocate their budgets to take advantage.” However, we believe that 2008 will see widgets turn into a communication tool, rather than simply a form of self-expression on social networking pages. As companies increasingly recognize the communication capability of widgets, widgets will become a major communication vehicle, rather than a novelty form of expression.

Over Thanksgiving Week Yahoo! modified the Yahoo! Widget Platform to Yahoo! Widget Engine 4.5, and also significantly re-vamped the look and feel of the Yahoo! widget site. Here’s the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly regarding these changes.

The Good
Users who have not previously installed the Yahoo! Widget Platform can now do so by clicking the “Get Widget” button for any Yahoo! widget. A check is done to see if the platform has previously been installed. If it hasn’t, the platform and the widget are both installed. Previously, the Yahoo! platform had to be installed before a widget could be added.

Yahoo! Widget Engine 4.5 now has Flash capabilities, and HTML capabilities. Flash will certainly enhance the user experience and encourage more developers to use the Yahoo! platform over simple web widgets.

The Bad
Newbies to Yahoo! Widgets won’t receive much information about widgets from the Yahoo! Widget home page. Instead, they’ll see a gigantic box for a single widget, along with an over-sized ad for Yahoo! personals.

A note to Yahoo! – There are an awful lot of people who still don’t know anything about widgets. Please don’t make them search all over your site to try to find what widgets are. Tell them on the widget home page. Show them a picture of a desktop with widgets on it. Put your video tour link near the top of the widget home page. Tell them about widgets such as weather, maps, dictionaries that almost everyone can use.

The Ugly
The entire look and feel of the re-designed Yahoo! widget site.

What’s the worst part? Is it the colors? Is it the retro ‘70’s font? Is it the unfinished look of the navigation? Is it the over-sized text and navigation buttons? Is it the gigantic “featured widget” box at the top of the page? Is it the huge advertisement for Yahoo! Personals? Is it the horrible waste of space?

It’s all of these aspects. And more.

Sorry, Yahoo!, but we can’t say anything positive about the new design. You need to have it completely re-done. Widgets are awesome and you’ve got a great platform – please make the widget site just as exciting as the widgets themselves.

The next few months to a year will be a very interesting time to watch the “Widget” market develop. There are a few new companies in the market focusing on web widgets and all are geared towards providing javascript or flash functionality that people can drop into their personal MySpace or Facebook pages. Meanwhile, Desktop Widgets seem to be flying under the radar without any real publicity. Widget Realm has decided to focus on the desktop market and current develops for Yahoo! Widgets (Konfabulator).

While most of the internet world is fascinated with the ability to customized their personal web page, there seems to be very little focus on desktop customization. The Mac World has been privy to “Widgets” for some time now, but the PC Users are just starting to notice the convenience of dashboard or desktop widgets. Services that allow the web widgets to float on the desktop, Google Gadgets, are not advancing the uses of widget. Yahoo! Widgets has been adding functionality and moving forward/advancing the technology.

Web vs. Desktop
The battle will continue play out between web and desktop widgets as both sides add functionality. Desktop widgets have a slight advantage over web widgets in two aspects: multi-window functionality and increased access to the computer resources. Web widgets will forever be tied to the browser windows that give them their functionality and support services. Most of the desktop/dashboard programs provide custom services built into their platforms that enable animation, multi-windows, music services, and more.

It would seem putting a widget on your personal web page is more for the people that come to view your page and less for the actual page owner. That said, would you invite people to your house to watch your new entertainment system and then only play the movie after making them sit through the previews?

The business model is simple for services like Slide and RockYou - Show Ads. Many music and movie studios are look at web widgets as a way to reach their audience and drive a huge opening weekends all based on marketing buzz created by people doing the advertising placement for them. There are advertising agencies that get paid very large sums of money to place ads in the right media source to reach the target audience and now it seems web widgets provide ad placement in exchange for linking your favorite song or YouTube video.

The human brain has had so much advertising thrown at it while on the internet; the internet experience has turned into a flashing, in-your-face, buy-my-product, see-the-movie ad deluge.

So, Why Desktop Widgets?
The question is simple:
“Why would I go get information if I can have it delivered to my desktop widget?”

External Communications
Widget Realm’s services allow organizations to use the power of desktop widgets to enhance communication and branding. Our external widget solutions allow schools, universities, and other groups to provide a central source that is always up-to-date and right on their desktop. Parents, students, and groups members should not have to search a website or find print outs to get the information they need. More important, why do they have to check email or receive phone calls to get urgent news or updates? Groups will continue to struggle with communication efficiency and effectiveness if they rely on email and website solutions as the only means to reach their groups.

Internal Communications
So many corporations struggle with email loads and the management of internal websites. Internal news and announcements are a large source of email inefficiencies.

For Example:
Average Newsletter Size: 100 Kb
Newsletter Distribution: 1000 people
Total Load at Distribution: 100 Mb

While that 100 Mb might no be a huge number, it is a number that most consists due to communication inefficiencies. A desktop widget could represent the same amount of information in a fraction of the bandwidth and with minimal storage space. Besides the resource savings, desktop widgets allow information to be “pushed” desktops through the day. Pulling the information together to put out a single newsletter is cumbersome and slow. A desktop widget allows employees to be reached quickly and will make “intranets” more effective. From a widget, employees can be linked directly to internal pages without filling their Inbox with updates and newsletters.

Future Topics for Widget Realm
Widget technology and acceptance is just starting to take hold. Widget Realm is working to address and provide solutions for many of the issues we have encountered.

By: Brian Powell - CEO