Slashdot Mirror
Yahoo Purchases Konfabulator
NerdyPunk2ML writes "Macworld news has an
article
about Yahoo's acquisition of Konfabulator, which will be announced Monday. Yahoo company executives said they will be
giving Konfabulator away for free, completely doing away with the US$19.95
currently charged for the product. The reason they purchased
Konfabulator was they wanted an easy way to open up its APIs to the developer
community and allow them easy access to the information on the Yahoo web site." From the article: "The acquisition of Konfabulator may not be the last Mac compatible product users see from Yahoo! While Schneider wasn't specific, he did say that there was interest in the Mac. 'There is a move at Yahoo! -- in addition to Konfabulator -- to move more onto the Mac,' said Schneider. 'We want to make sure we find a way to be more cross platform.'"
I'm sure the fact that Konfabulator's 'buy out price' went WAY down after Tiger, and Dashboard, were released has NOTHING, no, NOTHING AT ALL to do with this sale :)
And the CEO's new job title, "Director of Widget Technology"! What a step up.
I wonder if this is at the urging of Yahoo Japan? Here Yahoo is the most popular portal and search engine. I've heard Mac sales, not including the iPod, are way up so maybe there's some pressure to make things more cross platform?
Tea and kung-fu. Life is good. Rising Phoenix
pointless javascript based desktop junk.
How we know is more important than what we know.
After fiddling around with the website I found this:
Konfabulator is a JavaScript runtime engine for Windows and Mac OS X that lets you run little files called Widgets that can do pretty much whatever you want them to.
Hope that helps someone.
What does your Credit Report look like?
Konfabulator == widgets; desktop thingys made from *ml, javascript etc.
Apple later came up with Dashboard, created the mother of all smokescreens about Desktop Accessories to plead that it was not inspired by Konfabulator and the rest is history.
Apple's behaviour apparently wasn't breaking any law as such but it was the equivalent of some kid leaning over your shoulder and copying your homework. I expect the Dashboard apologists will appear shortly pointing to a piece of FUD called daringfireball, but the question remains:
would Dashboard have existed in the form it does, using the underlying technologies it does, trying to serve the purpose it does and look how it does if Konfabulator never had existed ?
answer: um...ah....oh
I say good luck to Konfabulator, hope they got a good price from Yahoo
While Schneider wasn't specific, he did say that there was interest in the Mac. 'There is a move at Yahoo! -- in addition to Konfabulator -- to move more onto the Mac,' said Schneider. '
I don't find this surprising. Lately, it seems that Yahoo has been getting some of the positive internet buzz that used to be reserved solely for Google. I imagine that releasing products specifically for Mac users is aimed at garnering similar buzz.
While Macs have a relatively small share of the market, they are, however, well represented among popular bloggers, technorati (ugh) and the mavens of the web: inform or impress these folks, and you will begin to inform and impress the rest of the web. This is a move to grab mindshare.
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
I can't see the purpose of a weather function on the desktop or perhaps a news ticker. All of the clutter of widgets cannot be worth the slight gain in functionality. A well-organized homepage with links/bookmarks should do the trick. A click or two to launch and use a browser are worth saving desktop real estate on a low-res (1024x768) LCD like mine.
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
if you read the damn article you'd notice they were giving refunds to people who bought it in the past 2 months. reading is fundamental and i don't think half the fucking population can do it anymore.
Kyle
http://www.unlogikal.net/
At what point did MS steal the idea for Active Desktop?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
>would Dashboard have existed in the form it does, using the
>underlying technologies it does, trying to serve the purpose it
>does and look how it does if Konfabulator never had existed ?
Meanwhile, other posters are complaining that Dashboard *doesn't* copy Konfabulator and requires (barring developer mode) looking at all of them at once.
Yes, Dashboard would have existed without Konfabulator. Dashboard is based on WebKit. WebKit is part of OS X. WebKit is what powers Safari and Mail's HTML rendering (and probably most other third-party HTML renderers at this point).
http://webkit.opendarwin.org/
Dashboard came at the same time that Automator did; Apple appears to be trying to ensure that their technologies are easy to automate and script into small, useful apps. After AppleScript, Automator, and the various scripting languages on the command line, it made perfect sense to build a javascript/HTML development tool based on WebKit.
I suspect that the only thing that would have changed if Konfabulator did not exist is that Apple would not have called their widgets "gadgets" for a few days.
Jerry
While I don't care much about Konfabulator per se, it's interesting to see how popular non-browser, web-based mini-apps are becoming. Looks like the first little frothy bit on the wave of the semantic web has arrived. It'll be interesting to see if this ends up generating as much buzz as the last few Next Big Things.
It certainly has the potential to. It's a platform-independent application framework, just like Java-on-the-browser was supposed to be, but this iteration is free from the one-size-fits-all constraints that browser-based development imposed (plus, widgets don't have to be stateless). In fact, this has all the earmarks of a disruptive technology, with the added advantage that it's based on well-deployed standard technologies.. i.e.: stuff Microsoft can't mess with as easily as Java.
Here is a better article on the news: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/aptech_stor y.asp?category=1700&slug=Yahoo%20Konfabulator
It says Konfabulator has only three employees!!! Now we know which three households have champagnes popping tonight.
Sun and Fun
I'm really disappointed Yahoo has left Yahoo messanger to rot on the vine.
No Supermode
No Audibles
No new features for years now.
Yahoo, when are you going to update Messanger for the Mac.
What? I know that Slashdotters aren't all on the same page, but most people here generally agree that software patents are bad. Especially the vague, hazy, and overbroad ones that look like obsfucated user manuals (claiming entire kinds of software or user interfaces) rather than looking like nice detailed technical USENIX conference papers. Only Konfabulator wasn't patented.
Now you're saying that even though Konfabulator wasn't patented, wasn't a trade secret, Apple isn't a monopolist, and no part of the Konfabulator code was used by Apple, Apple should be barred from making a similar product? Pray tell, what is this argument based? Should Apple's product suck just so that these small fry can make a couple bucks? Are you saying Apple should do it just to be nice? (It would be nice if Apple sent me a check for $50k so I could buy a Lexus. Just to be nice.) Comparing the free market of the software industry to an elementary school math test is a little facile, eh?
Surely you know, since you pointed to the daringfireball website, that there was nothing in Konfabulator, other than the general idea of JavaScript desktop accessories, that would have been useful to Apple. The reason Apple chose to write Dashboard from scratch is that it could save a lot of system resources and make a more polished product by leveraging existing parts of OS X like Web Kit. Konfabulator was a monstrously heavyweight framework based on Mozilla -- each desktop accessory was bigger than many Mac applications. The people at Apple aren't stupid. If buying Konfabulator would have saved them time and money, they would have done it, just like they bought SoundJam.
Konfabulator made a lot of money on Windows, as well as Mac, and now they got their payday from Yahoo!. No tears shed there, I'm sure.
With great power comes great fan noise.
I find it difficult to look at Konfabulator's widgets and look at Apple's widgets and believe that Konfabulator doesn't have something big to do with Dashboard.
It may or may not make perfect since for Apple to develop a javascript/HTML tool based on Webkit, but one that looks and feels almost identical to Konfabulator? Let's face it. If Windows had done Dashboard, Mac users worldwide wouldn't be able to shut up about how Windows ripped off poor Konfabulator.
On the flipside, if Dashboard's popularity made the Yahoo deal happen (which, come on, it probably did), then Konfabulator probably just made out better than they'd ever imagined.
(disclaimer: typing this in Tiger)
Konfabulator is awesome, if MicroSoft had released it, it would cost $69.95 in the form of an OS update.
That's nothing. If Apple released it, said OS update would cost $129. Oh, wait a sec...
defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES
killall Dock
Any widget you hold with the mouse while switching from dashboard to desktop will end up as a normal window.
And vice versa.
k2r
Or install the devMove widget.
http://widgets.yahoo.com/
Enjoy.
Wait. You spend all this money on some penis enlarging theater system and you don't even have any real life friends you can show it off to and brag about it to? You have to come on Slashdot to do it? We can't even see it.
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?