Yahooulator! and Yidgets

Om Malik alluded to Yahoo’s increasing thirst for acquisitions earlier this weekend (e.g Dialpad) However, their purchase of Konfabulator definitely turns things up a notch for Yahoo. Konfabulator is 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. Widgets can be alarm clocks, calculators, can tell you your WiFi signal strength, will fetch the latest stock quotes for your preferred symbols, and even give your current local weather. (Source: Konfabulator). I remember trying out Konfabulator on my G3 earlier last year and raving about a large number of widgets. The only reason I uninstalled the application was because of the $19.95 registration cost. I hope Yahoo takes a leaf from Google’s style of acquisitions and starts to offer a free Konfabulator version. This should apply enough pressure on Microsoft to ensure that the enhanced dashboard planned for Microsoft Vista is as slick as or better than Konfabulator.