Why Yahoo Bought Konfabulator

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Monty Solomon <monty () roscom com>
Date: August 14, 2005 2:27:34 PM EDT
To: undisclosed-recipient:;
Subject: Why Yahoo Bought Konfabulator



Why Yahoo Bought Konfabulator

By Chris Sherman, Associate Editor
August 10, 2005

Yahoo's recent purchase of Pixoria, developer of the quirky but
seriously cool Konfabulator platform, has many pundits scratching
their heads-what on earth would a web search company want with all of
those software widgets?

Pixoria describes Konfabulator product as "a JavaScript runtime
engine for Windows and Mac OS X that lets you run little files called
Widgets that can do pretty much whatever you want them to."

What are Widgets? A few examples include alarm clocks and
calculators; Widgets can measure and indicate your WiFi signal
strength, will fetch the latest stock quotes for your preferred
symbols, and even give your current local weather. Other Widgets do
search related tasks, such as looking up words in dictionaries or
articles in Wikipedia.

In short, they're specialized, mini-applications that run constantly
in the background, always ready to provide you with a bit of useful
information, whether or not you have a browser open. Two other key
points: Widgets take full advantage of the powerful graphics
capabilities of modern computers. And Konfabulator is open-source,
meaning anyone can create a Widget and share it with the world.

...

http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3526351




-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as lists-ip () insecure org
To manage your subscription, go to
 http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/