Some client technology is more than emerging nowdays. And I found today that microsoft is jumping in this wagon: it's a client technology enabling to foster personal awareness.

• Microsoft has nammed it "gadgets" see this blog 
• Mac used the term of "Widgets"
• And there is a Mac add-on nammed Konfabulator as the "early technology"

There are also other technologies targeting the same service, providing a framework to develop those items

• Klipfolio from Serence is one, they are called "Klips" there http://www.serence.com

The idea behind that is to provide a simple way of writing simple application (may be few parameters of an xml file), which purpose is to provide some monitoring of a user important resource, and allows him provide some simple customization. Those "what so ever you call them" items can be stuck on your desktop or a web page. And all together, they form what can be nammed a kind of "Dashboard".

This technology can be used to monitor the content of a web page, show the newest entries of an RSS feed, provide the last 15 minutes value of a stock quotation...

It may be very interseting to use this technology to setup appropriate dashboard, monitoring information for group collaboration: this would extend drastically the presence indicators of a sametime or sip server of sharepoint... And enable people to filter information and provides them with the right triggers to see when it's time to exchange and shre knowledge.

Much better than being the slave of his email incoming list!