Parrotheader.com

Maybe I'm a little late to the game, but I finally upgraded to the new Yahoo Widgets (I was previously on version 3.x) and now I wish I hadn't taken so long. I love the new interface with the Widget dock as it gives you the option to keep them nice and uniform (while still allowing free-form placement if you want.)

It seems there's widgets everywhere these days. Yahoo has widgets. Google has gadgets. Apple has Dashboard widgets. And Vista has Sidebar gadgets. And that's not even counting all the online widgets you find these days (like my Flickr widget on the right or even the bulk of the underlying interface that now powers Blogger.)

But desktop widgets are still what I primarily think of as a 'widget' and the most useful iteration for my purposes. They can provide useful, at-a-glance info in a tidy, attractive package. The only thing is that it's easy to get carried away and have too many running which can quickly clutter your desktop. Which is why I'm glad to see the dock functionality added to Yahoo's offering. But despite the fact that I'm actually running a couple more widgets now than I was previously it still seems to have a lighter footprint on my system resources. And for you Flickr users the new Flickr widget is fantastic and probably the best example I've seen from Yahoo when it comes to integration between its various properties. Good stuff.