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 webslinky: widgets
Desktop gadgets. Let's talk about widgets. A widget is a little application that provides useful information or simple functionality whilst looking pretty. One day Apple found a way to make a big glossy clock hover over the OSX desktop and, since then, everyone's wanted one - despite similar products being available for a number of years before that.Apple, Yahoo! and Opera all offer similar palettes of free gizmos which vary in practicality, but do at the very least add some vaguely useful window-dressing to a desktop. All can accurately use the full power of your 64-bit dual processor computer to replicate clocks, calculators, notepads and calendars. Such widgets are most useful when they share information – like your Yahoo! calendar for example - and my favourite is the weather forecast that provides an overview of the next few days in my local area. Perhaps the reason that widgets haven't become an essential part of our computing habits, however, is that their usefulness is limited to their captivity on the computer desktop. For instance, I have for years been using a standalone wall-based “calendar” application which gives me an at-a-glance overview of the current month, although it doesn't automatically sync with my Yahoo! account. But wait. There's something that should help bridge this gap between networked information and physical objects which the boffins are calling ubiquitous computing. This means distributing data directly to where it's needed and can be seen at a glance. Clever Russian designers Art Lebedev, for example, have created a keypad with graphic displays built into the buttons, whilst Ambient Devices produce day-to-day objects that relay pertinent information – like an umbrella that glows when rain is on the way. Perhaps the most fun of these real-life widgets is the French electro-bunny, Nabaztag, a mechanical wifi robot that communicates the arrival of an email or a rise in stock quotes through the waggle of an ear or the glow of his cheeks. Though the desktop widget may never be much more than a gimmick, it’s also the first step along what could be a much more significant path: to when the internet moves out of the browser, out of your “personal computer”, and becomes a seamless part of your physical environment.
David Thair
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related info
 useful linkswidgets.yahoo.com widgets.opera.com wikipedia: ubquitous computing www.artlebedev.com www.ambientdevices.com www.nabaztag.com
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see also
 webslinky #101web 2.0  webslinky #100directories  webslinky #099cute cats  webslinky #098tiny stickers  webslinky #097alternate worlds  webslinkyarchive books  books and comics archive Author interviews and reviews from 2002 to 2008. art  art archive Watch artist interviews and see images from British exhibitions. |
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