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Yahoo Launches Dashboard

Posted by Zonk on from the must-have-more-widgets dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Engadget has a 'live' post from a Yahoo press conference this morning showing something called Yahoo Dashboard. It looks awwwfully familiar. They brought out Ellen DeGeneres to demo it, and Tom Cruise to show an MI: 3 trailer for some reason." From the article: "I would like to announce right now what we call Yahoo Go. If you have some of the same problems dealing with things as Ellen .... Yahoo Go ... is a revolutionary way to connect users to Web services they already use. We're installing new applications right on devices (pix of laptop, TV, phone)." Dashboard is the relaunch of Konfabulator. We reported on Yahoo!'s purchase of Konfabulator last year.

11 of 320 comments (clear)

  1. Imitation is the sincerest form... by daveschroeder · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'm not sure if the submitter is insinuating that Yahoo "Dashboard" looks suspiciously familiar to Apple's Dashboard on Mac OS X 10.4.x (Tiger), but we should be reminded that Yahoo Go/Yahoo Dashboard is in fact Yahoo! Widget Engine, which is in fact Konfabulator renamed.

    And Konfabulator, by Arlo Rose (of Kaleidoscope fame) and Perry Clarke, was around on the Mac OS X platform first, until a Windows version was also released with the help of Ed Voas before Yahoo!'s purchase. In fact, if it weren't for the Windows version, Yahoo! may never have come knocking.

    And it's easy to say that Apple ripped off Konfabulator to make Dashboard, but if we go back a step further...say, a couple of decades, we find that the idea of Konfabulator - little modeless applets that do useful things, like an address book or a notepad or a calculator or a little game - actually hearkens back to Apple's original idea of Desk Accessories.

    It all comes full circle!

    No, wait. That's not full circle. It all leads back to Apple. ;-)

    1. Re:Imitation is the sincerest form... by Dylan+Zimmerman · · Score: 4, Funny

      It all comes full circle!

      I think you meant to say that it all goes in one infinite loop.

    2. Re:Imitation is the sincerest form... by calzones · · Score: 4, Interesting

      > ...you could say Konfabulator copied Active Desktop in a more effective way...

      YES! I have always thought that active desktop was a great idea with a horrible implementation, and when people showed me Konfabulator, it seemed to me to be a better implementation, but still not good enough.

      The idea of having desk accessories, small, one-purpose quick apps handy, is just sooo obvious, you can't give credit to anyone for that. The idea of embedding them in an out-of-the-way-yet-easily-accessible layer of the OS is also really obvious. So Konfabulator can't take credit for much, and neither should Apple, and accusations of copy-cat in either direction are totally ill-founded.

      That leaves the only aspect to this whole deal that can be remotely considered 'innovative:' using an html layer in the OS that the user can configure and control to create such apps of any flavor. And as much as I love Apple, credit for that has to go to MS, who unfortunately sought to make the entire OS revolve around some bastardized browser concept, instead of just this one special layer.

      What Apple can take credit for is simply for taking the initiative of making this available as part of the OS and supporting it. If you ask me, though, the implementation is still not ideal. I'd still like to access widgets that are embedded in my actual desktop in addition to in the "modal-ish" Dashboard layer, as well as being able to hide widgets behind hotspots around my monitor (like flip the mouse to a corner to bring up the calculator, flip it back to that corner to hide it again).

      Finally, Yahoo's decision to name their product Dashboard is really sad. Apple named theirs dashboard because they had no better name handy, and that was the easiest way to effectively communicate what the product is. The people who came up with the name Konfabulator really hit on a gold nugget from a sheer marketing perspective. Who doesn't want to own a 'Konfabulator?' Yahoo should have kept that name and leveraged it. It's akin to Apple buying the iPod from another company and then renaming it to 'MP3 Player.'

      --
      Asking people to think is like asking them to buy you a new car
  2. That's got the lesbian and gay community covered.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny
    They brought out Ellen DeGeneres to demo it, and Tom Cruise to show an MI: 3 trailer for some reason.

    Well, that covers the lesbian and gay community. No representation for us straight folks?

  3. Everyone Copying Everyone by minimunchkin · · Score: 3, Funny

    Dashboard steels the look of Konfabulator, itself a stolen idea. Yahoo buys Konfabulator and steals the name of Dashboard. Whatever next?

  4. Well, it wasn't Justin Timberlake... by Billosaur · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...but negative style points to Yahoo for trotting out Ellen Degeneres (really not that funny anymore) and Tom Cruise (Scientology poster boy and general nutcase). If these are the kind of people using Yahoo Go, I'll just do without thanks.

    --
    GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
  5. Best quote from TFA by PagosaSam · · Score: 5, Funny

    10:40 Outside, a guy talking into his phone: "Well Steve Jobs is a fucking Jedi Master of this shit compared to these other clowns."

    I love this business!

    --
    :q! Oh crap, not again...
  6. Ripping Off Apple Ripping Off Konfabulator by Wizard+Drongo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    OK, so Apple ripped off Konfabulator with OS X Tiger's Dashboard. Now Yahoo (who bought Konfabulator) are ripping off Apple by rebranding it "Yahoo Dashboard". Clever, since Dashboard is waaay more famous a brand than Konfabulator, but Apple can't sue Yahoo for ripping them off since if they did Yahoo would counter-sue on the basis that Apple ripped off Konfabulator.

    --
    The truth shall always be free: Boris Floricic is Tron.
  7. Does anybody really care about this? by cypherz · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Other than Yahoo execs? I'm a Mac user, and while I thought Dashboard was pretty kewl at first, my enthusiasm quicky waned. Now I've disabled it. Most of the funchtionality of it was already available on various web pages, and I can close the browser down and reclaim resources. With Dashboard, those widgets are consuming memory and other resources even when Dashboard isn't showing. Will Yahoo's version act the same way? Maybe a Konfabulator user can weigh in on this.
    Mod this down as a troll, but I just can't care about Yahoo's version of Apple's version of Konfabulator. Big waste of resources.

    --
    This sig kills fascists.
  8. yep. just head here... by jpellino · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://widgets.yahoo.com/

    --
    "Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
  9. Re:I tried it and had a gripe, so I stopped using by slthytove · · Score: 3, Informative

    If you hit the F8 key, it will bring up the "Heads Up Display"), showing you all your Widgets. If you hit Win+D, it will show you your desktop (which is sort of what Win+D is supposed to do). If you would rather use a Windows combination to see your desktop AND your Widgets, then hit Win+M, which will minimize all windows.