Will 2007 be the Year of the Widget?

Everyone’s talking about widgets these days. It seems as if the whole world has gone widget crazy. Widgets, widgets and more widgets.

According to David beagle it was YouTube that ushered widgets into prominence. Then Robin Good shares with us (no pun intended) a site called YourMinis that he claims has taken widgets to the next level — i.e. a “virtual online desktop“.

Google also offers us widgets galore (called gadgets) for our personalized homepage. So does Yahoo and… whew, the list just goes on and on doesn’t it.

Someone could easily build an internet empire just on widgets alone. Crikey! Even Steve Rubel is sold on widgets writing post after post about them. So has everyone gone widget bonkers?

Well most maybe, but not me. Why you ask? That could probably be best illustrated by an experience I had today.

I almost got sucked into giving YourMinis a whirl, but the site just hung until it crashed my browser so I gave up after several attempts.

And that doesn’t even take into consideration privacy concerns for putting my content online either. I mean, these days it’s not as if $$$ hard drive space is a concern.

It wasn’t that long ago when we were all screaming bloody murder if our firewall warned us that an app was trying to call out to the internet. Now it seems we are prepared to give online apps and widgets carte blanche honours. My how the times are-a-changing.

And what about performance? Online apps still can’t even come close to matching the speed of my desktop. Of course, mobile entrepreneurs like Robert Scoble might have a reason for wanting their calendar online. But as for the rest of us mortals I somehow have my doubts.

Oh well, they are cool to look at aren’t they? 2007 could very well end up becoming the year of the widget, but until some of these issues are resolved I guess the Bloke will have to play the Grinch this year. I’ll just wait and see.