With Google Desktop version 2, in Beta even if not fully debugged for locals, Google is really entering the "widget, gadget and consor..." game. They call there xgets panels and they propose a framework, including tools, API and documentation to create new "panels".

The purpose is to provide monitoring of various data sources one's can benefit from, and to combine search ing those data & knowledge sources:

• The web of course
• Your hard disk and network appliance storage
• RSS Feeds
• Any data source you wnat to monitor and present

So, its a personal dashboard application framework.

It's quite light to load, few hundred kbytes, and the API allows to do the nice graphics one's expect from xgets artefacts...

Of course, the API allows to define the update period for refreshing the panel content and you can get data from the web with HTTPRequest. The framework allows to manage a collection of panels (add/suppress/setup...).

The race for widgets has really started, as the majors have now started...