Patrick April 5th, 2007
I’ve spent a fair amount of time exploring the widget economy in recent weeks, and it occurs to me that there is no easy way to describe the various mutations of widgets that are spawning across the software universe. Intuitively, I wanted a framework on which to better understand the various ways in which widgets are evolving. So I sat down and tried to create one. The landscape is changing daily, so my work here may be outdated as soon as its published, but I find the following widget market segmentation intriguing.
- Desktop: Apple, Opera, Windows, Yahoo
- Webtop: Google, NetVibes, PageFlakes, YourMinis
- Netttop: Clearspring
- Pubtop: Blogger, Typepad, Widgetbox, WordPress
- Mobtop: Koloroo, Opera Mobile, Widsets, Zenzui
The examples in each of these segments is not meant to be exhaustive. To be sure, there are many other purveyors of widgets that fit into each. Perhaps one day, I’ll attempt to quantify the widget universe further and create a detailed list. In the meantime, read more to learn how I define each of these segments.
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Patrick April 3rd, 2007
Michael Calore over at Wired has a nice roundup of baseball-related widgets to satisfy the need for baseball fans of every stripe. I’m not really a baseball fan, and my interest in the NBA is limited to following the Washington Wizards (hey, get the Gilbert Arenas player widget!), so with the end of the NCAA basketball season last night my sports viewing will be limited to the golf majors between now and the start of football.
Still, if I was a baseball fan, I’d be looking closely at this list. Calore gets the idea of multi-platform widgets, identifying scoreboards for Apple Dashboard, Google Gadgets, and the Yahoo Widget Engine, and offers some limited advice on how to create your own widget. Baseball fans rejoice, and I’ll see you in October!
Patrick April 2nd, 2007
Like NetVibes and PageFlakes, YourMinis allows you to customize a collection of personalized web pages by dragging, dropping, configuring and arranging widgets. Content includes a wide variety of information sources–from major media outlets like ESPN, CNN and The New York Times–as well as fun stuff like a live webcam from SeaWorld.
But YourMinis is taking a broad-sweeping widget strategy, competing not only in this webtop category, but also taking on the WidgetBox Blidget service for turning any blog into a widget, and going head-to-head with the established desktop platforms: Apple’s Dashboard, Yahoo’s Widget Engine and Microsoft’s Windows Vista Gadgets. This is the first of what appears to be a comprehensive multi-platform widget strategy.