Hooray for Widgets! You just have to love these cute tinkertoys of usefulness.
Yahoo has released Yahoo Widgets 4.0 (you may recall when Yahoo bought the widget system called Konfabulator). New improvements include superior performance and a Vista-like docking system that works on XP computers.
Widgets, a staple of the Macintosh OS and the new Windows Vista, are little applications that can users can select and sprinkle around their desktop or join together into a little tool conglomerate. They perform all kinds of functions ranging from the silly (cartoons-of-the-day, vote for best buns) to the useful (news feeds, alerts, information displays, calculators, sharing tools). Why am I getting this feeling of Deja Vu?
Recently we’ve seen a surge in branded widgets made to promote a service, like Priceline, or a product, like an upcoming movie or album. They provide useful functionality in return for a consistent place on your desktop. These are the electronic equivalents of a stapler branded “Remember to drink Coke at lunch” sitting your real world desk.
Some branded applications go beyond the mere “widget” and are called BDA’s or Branded Desktop Applications – but that’s another post for another day.
Yahoo Widgets – who says OS X and Vista should have all the fun?
Thanks again to Techcrunch for highlighting this release for us.
Tags: Communications, Displays
I would love to hear your definition of a BDA in how they differ from widgets. A lot of confusion out there right now. Thanks!
I owe the blog a full writeup on this topic, and I appreciate you reminding me. In the meantime: I define the a BDA as a standalone applications that you download and install, whereas a widget depends on a widget framework such as Yahoo Widgets or Klipfolio. Because there is an existing framework, widgets tend to be lighter (smaller download) and users can usually add widgets in a few seconds, whereas adding a BDA can take a few minutes to install and sometimes require restarting the computer.
A BDA can act like a widget, however – and that’s probably where the confusion comes from. For example, you can a the Harry Potter countdown widget as a true widget inside the OS-X, Vista, Yahoo, or Klipfolio frameworks, or you can make it a standalone BDA that run whether you have a framework installed or not.
So I think some people tend to refer to a widget by its function, which may be easier in casual conversation, but I think the true definition is founded in the whether the program is a stand-alone app or part of a widget framework.