• by July 25, 2005

Yahoo! scooped up a company called Konfabulator, which makes software for tracking the weather, stock prices, and other news and information. Konfabulator's software allows users to monitor the information without launching a Web browser.

The application sounds cool, but why would Yahoo! want to steer people away from opening a browser? It doesn't make much sense, unless the Minute is missing something here. Of course, the browser might already be up, and Konfab might just be another way for Yahoo! to offer content in a more streamlined, easy-to-access way. Users will be able to see the content accessed by the application via an animated desktop icon.

Desktop widgets, as applications like Konfabulator's are called, seem to be getting more popular. Apparently such widgets enable software developers to more easily create and share new applications. This development coincides with the open source movement; Linux and Firefox are of the most popular examples.

Yahoo! says it will give away the Konfabulator software to promote experimentation and usage.