Fascinated with the possibilities for gadgets

I've been looking at Konfabulator because I have this funny feeling that widgets and gadgets are going to take off again. Microsoft is getting in the game and just starting to push developers to make gadgets as part of live.com.

Plus, Konfabulator's maker, Pixoria, was acquired by Yahoo over the summer. There was a little buzz about it, then I haven't heard much more. Maybe there's buzz on a frequency I can't hear, some community I'm not tuned into? I don't know.

Widgets interest me because:

They're slick and cute.
They're part local/part internet, like the OPML Editor I've been spending so much time with.
They're internet not in a browser.

Just started checking them out, but Microsoft's gadgets don't appear to be housed on the desktop and they are in a browser, so that makes them less interesting to me.

When you browse through the Konfabulator gallery you see mostly uninspired creations, like 200 or so RSS readers each for a single feed. Looks like they're made mostly by kids, given the number of gaming-related widgets, the writing style of the newbie tutorial, and the fact that the concept's roots are in the skinnable desktop MP3 players that were so hot five years ago.

So much more could be done with them, so I'm keeping my eye on them.

Here's a cartoon history of Konfabulator that illustrates the creativity and ironic humor of the folks behind it. I love how users are portrayed as enthusiastic while prospective development partners are bumps on a log, or just not ready to see the flash of genius. The medicine show guy in the picture brings Dave to mind, only he seems able to get all kinds of important people and regular folks all stirred up along with him.

And check out the illustration of Mac vs PC users on page 8 of the cartoon story. These guys are great.