Problems with Widgets

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/technology/20myspace.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Article: “MySpace Restrictions Upset Some Users,” by Brad Stone of The New York Times, discusses the growing discontent among the MySpace community over recent restrictions on the use of widgets and other third party applications in user profile pages.

Snipperoo Widget Management Service

http://www.snipperoo.com/

Snipperoo widget management service allows webmasters, bloggers, or anyone else with a website to set up a free account and use the Snipperoo toolkit to add or delete widgets from a site page. Snipperoo is designed to be compatible with virtually any widget but requires that sites have JavaScript enabled, making the service unavailable to some notable social networks such as MySpace.

Clearspring.com Content Owners Page

http://www.clearspring.com/content-owners/

Clearspring.com’s Content Owners page describes the value of widgets as a means of delivering personalized web content, outlines several problems with widget distribution and monetization, and presents Clearspring services such as widget repackaging for universal compatibility and scalable analytics services that are tailored to address those issues.

“Yahoo Buys Up Konfabulator”

http://www.macobserver.com/article/2005/07/25.2.shtml

Article: “Yahoo Buys Up Konfabulator,” from The Mac Observer, an Apple news site. The July 2005 article announces Yahoo’s purchase of Konfabulator, a provider of mini-application creation software that has since become Yahoo! Widgets. Also discusses the growing popularity of desktop widgets, along with the controversy surrounding the release of Apple Dashboard Widgets, a free software program similar to Konfabulator that is integrated into Mac OS X “Tiger.”

“Some Bling for Your Blog”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/18/technology/18basics.html?ex=1326776400&en=7688d1334eb3722f&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

Article: “Some Bling for Your Blog,” by Scott Kirsner of the New York Times, discusses the increasingly common practice of using web widgets, or mini-applications that can be inserted into a website, to enhance and decorate blogs. Addresses some of the drawback of web widgets such as slow loading pages, ambiguity of function and the lack of a direct monetization model, and interviews several prominent bloggers for their perspective on the use of widgets.