In case you have been living under a rock recently, the web is atomizing - fast. Keith Teare of Edgeio has a good follow-up post on Fred Wilson's discussion of this "De-portalization" trend. It seems that the resounding consensus across the web is that the old school aggregation model is going down. Several folks are speaking on this topic at Ajax World East 2007 including:
In this post, Brian Braiker of Newsweek discusses the massive impact that widgets will have in the coming year.
Millions of MySpace members dress up their pages with videos, music, photos and more. And the technology that makes it all possible is so easy to use that, like Stroupe, many MySpacers didn’t even know they were using it. But each movable part of Stroupe’s profile is there thanks to a widget. Get used to that word.... If 2006 was all about social networks, user-generated content and YouTube, then it’s a fair bet that 2007 will be about further personalizing life online. Already, portals like Google and Yahoo! offer customizable pages. Want to see a calendar, learn a new word-of-the-day and check local windsurfing conditions all from your homepage? No problem, you have thousands of widgets to choose from. And the fact that they’re so intuitive has made the features very popular. “The Google personal homepage is the fastest-growing Google product,” says Marissa Mayer, the company’s vice president of “search products and user experience.” “This market is going to be very large.”Blogstar Om Malik and Niall Kennedy are mentioned for their great work on the Widgets Live conference. It still blows me away how a simple comment blew up into a full fledged conference now being discussed in mainstream media publications. This timing of this article was kind of neat given the discussion on David Beisel's blog, as well as on the post I made before the article was released entitled, "2007 Year of the Widget?." To review what happened in 2006, check out this post from my friend Ivan. With all the activity in the space, it looks like it will be a fun year... technorati tags: newsweek, widgets, predictions, 2007, niallkennedy, om, startpages
1. Thought I - We need a “Myspace” strategy - Over 50% of the Colts fans who have pre-registered for the (soon to be launched) Colts Social Network already have built personal profile pages on myspace or other social net sites. And many of these fans are already grabbing our registered trademarks and photos and using them (illegally) to decorate their pages. So do we send them all cease and desist letters? Or do we go with the flow? We chose the latter… 2. Thought II - this has viral potential: Fans will be able to find the widget at colts.com/widgets or at myspace.com/colts. Once they grab it, fans can E mail the widget to friends, or their friends can simply grab the widget from them and put it their pages too. 3. Thought III - this could drive traffic: Embedded in the widget are several links for more Colts content which direct the user back to our Website. Widgets can be programmed to cause the content to pop up inside the widget, so that the viewer can stay on his own page, but we’re greedy about traffic, so we hope users won’t mind coming to our site. We’ll see. 4. Thought IV - Sponsors will love it: Depending on the content we put in the widget, we can include a sponsor tag, or even embed sponsor content into the widget. This makes it a money maker right out of the gate. 5 Thought V - this has enormous potential: there are so many ways to employ widgets that it’s tough to know where to start. Happily, other people - smarter than I - have already written extensively on the subject.Look out for more stuff from these guys in 2007. They have quite a few tricks left up their sleeves... technorati tags: widgets, patcoyle, colts, slideshow, myspacewidgets, myspace
While SideShow, that snazzy forthcoming feature that lets you fire up slideshows, widgets, and other random goodies with actually booting up, has been garnering a good bit of attention lately, it's not much good without a equally flashy remote to control the action from afar. While there's been several devices parading around as Vista MCE remotes, CEPro is now reporting that Interlink Electronics -- the folks who sued Nintendo for jacking their motion-sensing technology and implanting it in the Wiimote -- is the "first company to officially announce a SideShow remote control." The firm asserts that the SlideLink will let customers "select songs, schedule recordings, navigate video clips and photographs, display TV program guides, and even browse recorded TV shows" right from the worn down cushion of your sofa. Still, we're not yet sure if this thing will utilize RF, Bluetooth, or some other short-range wireless format, and since this doesn't seem to be the company's "first priority" (see lawsuit mentioned above), who knows when we'll see this thing in the flesh. (more...)Chumby
The device, in prototype, is small, designed for the “kids,” and sports a Wi-Fi adapter, an AC power plug, a small, color touchscreen, and an open architecture. The company wants people to hack the software, hardware, and even the device’s case with their own modifications. It’s not precisely open source, but it’s all open. They hope the device will ship in the second quarter of 2007 for about $150. They also expect that it could be licensed or replicated in many forms—they have released or shortly will release the parts list and schematics among other parameters—and they’re curious what results. (more...)WidgetStation
Korea's emTrace looks to be branching out from its smartphone-centered niche, jumping on the widget bandwagon with its beefed-up alarm clock, the WidgetStation. Packing dual LCD screens (one color, one monochrome), the device will give you at-a-glance access to all the usual information that can be widgetized, including stocks, weather, and RSS feeds, as well as integration with a desktop PIM and the ability to browse photos (but apparently not videos) stored on a desktop PC. Interestingly, while the device will let you listen to Internet radio stations, there's no mention of support for plain old AM or FM radio -- one step forward, two steps back we suppose. From the looks of it, you'll also have to plan on stringing some ethernet cable if you're thinking of using the WidgetStation very far from your router, with the device sporting an RJ-45 port but no built-in WiFi -- something others don't seem to have had any trouble doing. Still no word on price, though emTrace should be announcing that at CES if the product is launching in early 2007 as planned. (more...)technorati tags: widget, widgetstation, chumby, sideshowremote, widgetdevices
Venture capitalist David Beisel theorizes in this post that 2006 was the year of the widget.
"I think that the real (and largely uncovered) story of 2006 is the emergence of online syndication widgets...it should be said the rise of online video was fueled in part by widgets – YouTube built a good portion of their own traffic through the syndication of their player throughout the net (and especially on MySpace). Many photosharing sites (like Photobucket and Filmloop) similarly based their viral expansion on syndication of their hosted content through widgets on MySpace and other social networks."Although I agree with David's observations, I think I agree with my friend Ivan Pope at Snipperoo that 2007 will be even better. Ivan commented that,
"...2007 will be the year of the widget. This year (2006) has been the birth."There are several reasons why I think this year has the potential to be more explosive: 1. Microsoft Vista/Live, Apple Leopard, Fox Interactive Spring Widgets, Adobe Apollo (nuff said) 2. Major media companies have widgets on product roadmap for 2007 3. Widgets are being embraced by traditional portals as means of B2B content exchange 4. Many of the major "drop points" such as Bebo and Protopage have started to integrate widgets 5. Next generation drop points such as Uber have widgets as an integral part of their gameplan 5. Advertising agencies are going nuts over how to roll out campaigns with these suckers in 2007 6. Services like Sniperroo and Clearspring are making it easier for newcomers to get in the game This is an interesting little post in light of Dare's bold post stating that "Widgets Become More Important than APIs for Data Exchange on the Web." Recall that it was Dare that inadvertently spawned the tremendously successful WidgetsLive Conference. What do YOU think? technorati tags: widgets, genuinevc, 2007
Taming the Wild World O’ Widgets, the Social Web and all things Digital Convergence by Hooman Radfar
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