Sobees desktop widget engine launches public beta

Filed under: Internet, Windows, Beta, web 2.0

Sobees desktop widget engine launches public beta

by Brad Linder Oct 23rd 2008

Sobees, a desktop widget engine that's been in private beta since March is now open to the public. The public beta version includes a ton of updates, and I have to say the new Sobees look a lot nicer than the version I looked at earlier this year.

The Sobees platform is designed to let you access web content on your desktop without launching a web browser. There's an RSS reader and a handful of other widgets including a news aggregator and an election 2008 widget that is filled with up to date news on the US presidential election.

There's also a search bar that will let you conduct web searches (using Windows Live Search only for now) without launching a web browser.

The overall platform is rather slick and the widgets are much more attractive than the hexagon-shaped widgets Sobees was showing off in March. But I have to wonder whether it makes that much sense to launch a widget engine whose sole purpose is to provide information that you could easily access with a few clicks in a web browser. Maybe I'm wrong, but I imagine most people using internet-connected computers these days have a web browser open more often than it's closed, which makes Sobees rather redundant, no matter how slick it looks.

Tags: sobees, widgets

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Vadim Peretokin said 11:34AM on 10-23-2008

Seems they're late to the scene with the amount of widget frameworks (google gadgets, screenlets, adobe air, etc.) available.

Not getting it anyway, it's windows only...

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