Yahoo buys Konfabulator

Widgets expand

http://www.konfabulator.com
from WinCustomize Forums
Popular widget enabling program, Konfabulator, has been bought out by Yahoo.  According to the Konfabulator home page, the name of the program will slowly be changed to "Yahoo! Widgets".  The name "Konfabulator" will slowly be retired.  For widget enthusiasts, it means that users will no longer have to pay to register Konfabulator.  Users who paid for Konfabulator in the past couple of months will receive refunds.
11,520 views 20 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I should think this is a clear indication that Widgets/Gadgets is shaping up to be a key "battleground" similar to the IM "wars". No doubt Google, MSN and AOL are not very far away from some type of Widget program. However DesktopX is poised to dominate having been in the business for quite awhile. Plus DX has an edge with gadgets not requiring the main program. Even though Konfabiyahoo is free, its still one less download to use DX gadgets.
Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I am be wrong but I thought the konfabulator guy worked at or for stardock? Wasn't there a story about that when K was released for windows?
SoundPackager - Customize the Windows sound scheme
Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top

The developer of Kapsules works at Stardock.  Konfabulator is/was a 3 person company in California.

Reply #5 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I'm interested to see how they'll refund us our purchase price...

For the record I tried Konfabulator - for about 2 weeks - but came back to DesktopX as it was better (for my needs).
Reply #6 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Plus DX has an edge with gadgets not requiring the main program. Even though Konfabiyahoo is free, its still one less download to use DX gadgets.


Does that really matter to some people? I think everybody on this site know the "free are better" crowd that is around. The people at the "mac" sites are going crazy over this. I really don't think this is a good thing for DesktopX. Although it depends how Yahoo markets it.
Reply #7 from WinCustomize Forums Top
The people at the "mac" sites are going crazy over this


This mac owner loves the news! I still have OSX Panther on my mini mac, and was about to invest in a $20 mac widget program (Amnesty), but now I don't have to!!

YAHOOOOOO!
Reply #8 from WinCustomize Forums Top
/me stares into his crystal ball

I see... a dark and grim future... advertisements everywhere... and abandonement.


Oh, I don't know where this goes. It's is intrigueing that a big company shows interest in customisation stuff though.
Reply #9 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I am glad to get a refund....

If the gadget library (web site) is full of practical, and useful little programs that look great on screen as well - I imagine the draw to them will be significant based on their additional ability to run by themselves.

Looking forward to the future (I already have the core weather working again thanks to Mormegil and Stardock).
Reply #11 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I believe Greenreaper already wrote an article about this.
Reply #12 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Talk about being sellouts. In hindsight this was very predictable. They were hot stuff on the Mac, came over to Windows and discovered that programs like DesktopX, Avedesk, Kapsules, Samurize and others were already entrenched and took the buy-out option.

Don't expect to see much innovation coming from Konfabulator now that it's Yahoo's nickel.
Reply #13 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Oh well, I think is kind of neat. Free. I checked out the widgets and a lot are very nice. I don't use any of these types of programs at the moment.
Reply #14 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Oh well, I think is kind of neat. Free. I checked out the widgets and a lot are very nice. I don't use any of these types of programs at the moment.
Reply #15 from WinCustomize Forums Top
The developer of Kapsules works at Stardock. Konfabulator is/was a 3 person company in California.



Ah, thanks for clearing that up.
Reply #18 from WinCustomize Forums Top
So which part of the Register's article do you disagree with? 
Reply #19 from WinCustomize Forums Top
First of all, the majority of The Register's tech-software related articles are mostly, what I like to call, buzzflame. I have a problem with that, and therefore cannot take them seriously. In regards to the memory usage, I don't think the user quite comprehends the memory usage. It uses *200mb of memory* because it's free memory. When memory is needed, the memory in use by those widgets are paged unless they're active. I don't know about the windows version, as I don't use it.

Yahoo! "shunned" Desktop X because they didn't *attempt* to acquire them? Wow. Maybe I would understand The Register believes they could have made a better choice in software, but that's pretty foolish.

Perhaps Yahoo! purchased Konfabulator, because, even in your words, has "flashier" widgets/default widgets.

So, my question to you Brad, is you don't disagree with anything in the article? Esp, the hint that widgets in the first place are useless, sort of contradicting the article itself.

The User Experience is obviously much smoother than things like AveDesk.

Sure, they have every right to state maybe it wasn't the best choice, but like most The Register software/tech related articles, it's extreme and buzzflame. Because as we all know, that gets traffic.
Reply #20 from WinCustomize Forums Top

I didn't say I agreed or disagreed with the Register article.

So I'll put my views point by point for our conversation.

1) I don't think Konfabulator is "bloated" in general but that it's overall design lends itself to bloat.  Unlike DesktopX, Konfabulator doesn't give you the option to IMPORT widgets into a single environment.  As a result, each widget on Konfabulator has quite a bit of overhead.  On DesktopX, I could load up the DX environment and import 20 widgets in and it woudl probably use less than half the memory it would on Konfabulator.  However, as a practical matter, most people are only going to run 2 or 3 widgets at which point it's not an issue.

2) Want to know my opinon why the Register is so harsh about Konfabulator? Because they've followed the whole desktop extension scene since the start -- the real start back in 1999 and tend to throw water on those hyping their works.  This panel they did was the height of arrogance IMO.  It doesn't susprise me one bit that some media outlets, particularly the Register, would throw some water on that sor tof thing.

3) I cannot comment on Yahoo and DesktopX or other Stardock projects with Yahoo.  But I will say this, if Yahoo makes its purchasing decisions based on how flashy the default content is, that's pretty silly.  Moreover, I would put DesktopX 3.1's default content up against Konfabualtor's any day.

4) Are widgets useless? I obviously don't think so.  But at the same time, I don't think there's such a thing as "Widget Mania". For all the coverage widgets have gotten, we still end up seeing a lot of web cams, clocks, and weathe rmonitors.   If you ask me, and you did, I suspect that in the long-run Konfabulator's contribution to widget lore will be to have stereo-typed widgets as being graphical mini-applets for displaying net data.  That's my official prediction.  5 years from now, if widgets are popular at all, it'll be mainly for displaying various XML feeds in a graphical format.  But for that to happen, it'll have to compete against Microsoft's Avalon and I wouldn't want to take the bet that Konfabulator, even with Yahoo's help, is in any position to take on Avalon.  Avalon is MUCH MUCH easier to code that kind of thing for than Konfabulator (or DesktopX).

In conclusion, Konfabulator got flamed by The Register IMO because they asked to be flamed.  By putting up a 10 day pat on the back hype-fest they invited someone to poke at them.  If they wanted unconditional fawning, they should have stayed on the Mac platform where the Mac drones are always more than happy to ignore reality.