Yahoo Gives Itself a Widgie

By Geoff Duncan Published July 25, 2005

Yahoo, Inc., announced today that it has acquired Pixoria Inc, developers of Konfabulator, an application which enables people to run "Widgets" on their desktops. Konfabulator Widgets are small, custom tools which perform specific tasks, such as controlling the music playing on your computer, graphing stock prices, acting as a metronome, or monitoring weather reports or sports scores. Furthermore, Yahoo is now giving away Konfabulator for free, eliminating the product’s previous $20 price tag. Users who paid for Konfabulator in the last two months will receive a refund.

Yahoo is making Konfabulator the core technology behind Yahoo Widgets as an easy-to-use way to expose Yahoo’s XML-based content to a broader audience and enable developers and enthusiasts use that content in new ways. Widgets formerly had to use brute-force methods to "scrape" Web sites for up-to-date information; now, Widgets can tie in to Yahoo’s ever-expanding range of XML-based content, which in turn puts Yahoo in front of more computer users—especially if someone comes up with a must-have "killer Widget." Available for both Windows and Mac OS X (where it significantly predates Apple’s own widget-laden Dashboard), Konfabulator has developed an enthusiastic development community which has released more than 1,000 Widgets for general use.

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Konfabulator requires Windows XP or Windows 2000, or Mac OS X 10.2 or later.

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Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…

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