Konfabulator rebranded as Yahoo! Widgets
December 12th, 2005
Today Konfabulator prompted me to upgrade to the latest version and I was somewhat surprised to see it rebranded as Yahoo! Widget Engine. I’ve been using Konfabulator for a while now to put both a small picture frame on my desktop with photos of my family, as well as a handy controller for iTunes. I’ve also been using the Weather and RSS news channels in the Conpose Heads up Display you get by hitting ‘F8’.
Konfabulator Yahoo! Widgets are one of those applications I forget that I use everyday — they’re always there, but I don’t think about them as seperate from the OS itself. It’s almost enough to make me sign up for some of Yahoo’s other services to take greater advantage of the integration they’re claiming in this version… but I think I’ll wait on that for a bit. I’m very happy with Gmail and don’t feel like starting another account for web based email at the moment.
There seems to be a lot more mergers and buy outs of late. I worry a little about this because I don’t like the idea of having a single company controlling and/or limiting my services (I call it the “Costco Effect”); however, I also don’t like having to think up and remember different user names and passwords for each individual service either.