Wednesday, June 13, 2007

The Little Widget That Could

In a world of multi-megabyte monolithic applications like Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop, it's easy to get the impression that the programs you run need to be huge and complex to actually do any real work.  You need lots of options, lots of bells and whistles, and huge multi-screen supporting windows of content, right?

Perhaps not.

Until recently, I'd thought of widgets (those always-ready little "applets" that run in a Mac's dashboard, Windows Sidebar or Yahoo! Widgets) as curious little programs that basically helped me get easy access to the time, weather, phases of the moon, and my calculator.

Then someone showed me a widget for Quicken.  And one for Skype.  And one for Wikipedia.   Then I discovered widgets that work on mobile phones (like my Treo smartphone).  Wow.  I realized that to enter a simple transaction in Quicken, I didn't have to wait for the program to launch, navigate to the account listing and enter.  To make a SKYPE call, I just need to press F8, or to see where that earthquake I just felt originated... well you get the drift.

Current widgets are mostly information or entertainment oriented, with a few biz widgets. I found most of them on Apple's site, but there are plenty more on Yahoo! and other places.

I'm hoping that these little buddies become even more prevalent and that we see the invention of widgets that help us quickly access tools for education, like gradebooks and discipline tool or students management systems.

Once these are out, I'll pop all of them on my Apple iPhone (we can dream) and I'll be good to go!

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