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.

KlipFolio is a desktop application that lets you access online content like RSS feeds, weather forecasts, Flickr slideshows, YouTube videos, and other web content. We first checked out KlipFolio more than two years ago when it was little more than a widgetized RSS reader. But the application has come a long way since then.

You can now use KlipFolio to subscribe to all sorts of content. Pretty much anything with an RSS feed is fair game, but you can also browse the KlipFolio web site for specialized "klip sets," including email notifiers, social network updates, or content from webcams. There are also klip sets that let you monitor shoutcast streams or see the latest updates to the iTunes music store.

KlipFolio 5 beta D also has a slick new interface. You can dock the application to the top, bottom, left, or right side of your screen or let it float free. You can rearrange your klips by dragging and dropping. And you can choose from a variety of customizable skins.

The Windows application is also pretty lightweight compared with other desktop widget engines, eating just under 10MB of RAM during my test.

[via MakeUseOf]

NewsGator, the company behind award-winning RSS readers FeedDemon, NetNewsWire and NewsGator Go!, has just released an update to its widget platform, in the form of Editor's Desk 2.1.

Editor's Desk is a web-based tool for creating widgets that can display dynamic content (using RSS) that can then be embedded into your website, Facebook page (as an app), Blogger, TypePad, NetVibes, iGoogle,Pageflakes, Live.com and Live Spaces.

Version 2.1 boasts an improved interface that is not only better looking, but easier to use. Version 2.1 has also added two new widget templates, a search tool (for premium subscribers), the ability to clone widgets and a way to monitor the feeds within your widgets for problems.

We played around with the new version of Editor's Desk and were impressed with how easy the whole creation process really was. To create a widget, you can either add your own RSS feeds or choose a collection of feeds from categories provided by NewsGator. The free version of the service only provides minimal customization options for your widgets, you can select from a set a templates and then modify some of the colors, but if you pay for the premium version of the service, you can customize the CSS and HTML of the widgets. Some companies like USA Today and The Discovery Channel have already done that with spectacular results.

It's been about a month since Google announced its new Friend Connect platform which lets you add social widgets to any blog or web site. If you've been waiting patiently to see these widgets start popping up on the wild, wild web, it looks like the wait is over. Tech blogger Orli Yakuel has added a widget to her blog, Go2Web20.

The widget looks a lot like the recent readers widgets you find from services like MyBlogLog. But Friend Connect offers users the opportunity to interact with their contacts and communities more deeply without leaving the current web page. For example, Yakuel has added a comment widget that lets FriendConnect users who sign up to be members of her blog to leave comments that are visible to other members.

When you visit a site with a FriendConnect widget you can invite your Google contacts or friends from other sites including MySpace, Hi5, Orkut, or Plaxo to join the community.

Yakuel says there are only a handful of Google gadgets available at the moment, but says there is a section where you can grab gadgets from third party developers, much like the gadget gallery for iGoogle and Google Desktop.

[via ReadWriteWeb]

Yesterday we told you about a new desktop widget engine called Sobees which is in private beta. We also told you that if you wanted in on the private beta you had to sign up at the Sobees homepage. But Francois from the Sobees team has been kind enough to share 10 invites with Download Squad readers. Just be one of the first ten people to leave a comment on this post and we'll email you an invitation.

Keep in mind, this is beta software. And not beta like Gmail is still in beta. While the widget engine is fairly impressive, it's also sluggish and a memory hog. But we suspect both of these problems will diminish over time. And if you want to keep an eye on the application's progress, and are willing to share feedback with the developers, just leave a comment below.

Update: And we've got our winners. We've turned off the comments for this post and will be sending out the invite codes momentarily. Thanks for playing!

While we often find ourselves thinking "the last thing this world needs is another desktop widget engine," we might be willing to make an exception for Sobees. While we'd forgive you if you mistook Sobees as nothing but a desktop widget engine like Google Desktop, Yahoo! Widget Engine, or Vista's gadgets and the Dashboard in OS X, it's actually much more.

First of all, yes, Sobees does let you load modules on your desktop for doing things like making notes, showing the time and date, or interacting with the web. There are also nifty RSS and Twitter clients, and a web browser with a built in web search feature that lest you sort results by images or text links.

But there are at least three things that set Sobees apart from most other desktop widget applications.

1. Sobees widgets are highly customizable. You can resize any widget by clicking on a portion of the edge and dragging it in or out. You can also make widgets translucent or opaque, and choose from a variety of options for each widget.
2. Sobees widgets interact with one another, and you can share content from widgets with your contacts. For example, you can save an item from an RSS feed and share it with other Sobees users.
3. Your data is synchronized with a remote server, which means you can install Sobees on multiple computers and changes to one will be reflected on another. If you'd like to have a separate setup for your work and home computers, there's no problem though, because you can set up multiple desktops.

Sobees is currently Windows only, but according to CenterNetworks, a Mac client is in the works. An API will also be released eventually which should dramatically increase the number of widgets available. Sobees is quite clearly still beta software. It takes a fairly long time to load the application, it freezes up periodically, and it uses close to 200MB of RAM. But Sobees is worth keeping an eye on. If you want to help test the software, you an sign up to participate in the private beta.

Yesterday we gave you a few pointers on pimping out your WordPress blog. So today we figured it was time to point out a couple of quick and easy ways to make your Blogspot site look a bit less like you ripped a page out of Blogging for Dummies.

As you may be aware, part of the reason Google's Blogger service is so popular is that it's incredibly easy to use. All files are hosted on Google's server, and all you have to do is pick a template and start writing. You can also add widgets to your site by choosing from a list of options in the layout tab of Blogger. If you really know what you're doing you can customize the HTML for your page layout or add custom widgets to your sidebar.

But even if you don't know a lick about HTML, Blogger has a few hidden tricks up its sleeve. If you go to draft.blogger.com instead of www.blogger.com, you can access a bunch of experimental widgets that Google has decided aren't ready for mainstream consumption just yet.

AOL, this blog's parent company, has acquired widget and web desktop company Goowy. Goowy's original product was a webOS or webtop that you can use as an online desktop when you're away from your home computer. But while there are a ton of these services around, we're not convinced that people actually use them very much. So it's Goowy's more recent product that probably caught the eye of AOL: the YourMinis widget platform.

YourMinis widgets can be placed on almost any web page. You can add them to your iGoogle, Netvibes, or Facebook pages. Or you can add them to a desktop widget application like Vista Sidebar or Yahoo! Widget Engine. Widgets range from a YouTube video player to a Twitter application.

Goowy has been working with AOL to develop widgets for the MyAOL personalized homepage service.

We've been playing with KDE 4 for the past few days. Actually, there was very little playful about it. We're nothing if not honest. We struggled. We even used phrases that would make a sailor blush.

We do, now, have a (mostly) working install of KDE 4 on Xubuntu. And we stand by what we said with our first impressions. KDE 4 is fast, and does have the potential to be a powerful and utilitarian desktop.

However, it's just not there yet.

A few of the major issues we encountered we have since solved.

Updates can be made to a system that doesn't have a root account using gksu and Synaptic, or via the console. It seems there is a problem with calling kdesu. The other solution, of course, is to give root a password. This was a bit disappointing, but it certainly wasn't a deal breaker.

Freeware dashboard widget App Update checks Version Tracker to make sure your Mac's third-party software is up-to-date. After App Update checks your system, it provides links to the respective Version Tracker pages so you can download and install the updates.

You can configure the widget to automatically check daily or weekly, and it supports Growl so that you can be notified when updates are available. You can also add Apple Downloads and Mac Update as update sources to potentially find updates for more of your installed software. If you don't install all of your apps into your /Applications folder, simply add your desired paths into the "Path Settings" area of the widget's config section.

Since Mac users can't benefit from a system-wide package manager like that of Ubuntu, using this simple dashboard widget can keep your software updated.

As you may know, the New Hampshire primary for the US 2008 Presidential election is today. Although web 2.0 itself has not been positioned as a major campaign issue, the power of the web and social networks has played a large role in not only individual candidate campaigns, but in the debate process itself. Additionally, with his victory in the Iowa caucus, Democratic candidate Barack Obama has become the first candidate leading in Internet metrics to pull off a major victory. So this begs the question, are Obama's fans the most savvy and "connected" supporters? Well, in addition to having the most friends on MySpace and supporters on Facebook, Sen. Obama is also leading in the war of campaign widgets.

According to Widgetbox, a major distributed widget marketplace, Obama has nearly double the number of widget impressions as his nearest opponent. In fact, he has almost as many impressions as his two nearest competitors combined! These widgets are embedded on personal web pages, blogs and social networking sites. This certainly gives additional (if ancillary) credence to the idea that Obama is the most plugged-in candidate.

We love desktop widgets as much as the next guy, but sometimes Google Desktop, Yahoo! Widget Engine, or Vista's sidebar can get a bit overwhelming. They just take up so much space hanging out in your sidebar.

Stick is a widget-like utility that lets you add a handful tabs to your desktop to access basic applications. The utility ships with just a few tools, like a News Feed applet, calendar, notes, and Windows Explorer utilities. If you know C++ and MFC, you can also write your own utilities.

If you want access to hundreds of pre-built desktop widgets, Stick isn't for you. But if you're looking for an application that lets you open just a handful of the applications you need most frequently from low-profile tabs that you can dock to the top, bottom, right or left of your desktop, Stick might be worth a look.

[via NoHeat]

Netvibes has just launched a private beta of its new iteration, Ginger. To those lucky few who were given an invite; now you must know how those kids who found Wonka's Golden Ticket felt. For the rest of us, Netvibes was kind enough to post a run-through of some of their pending and exciting features.

Netvibes has been one of the most popular and easy to use personal start pages for a long while (well, long in internet years; they're like dog years, you know). They offer tons of useful, ready to load widgets. Widgets include eBay, most popular online email accounts such as Yahoo! Mail and Gmail, Facebook, Digg, and many more. You can also insert any RSS feed and set up tabs for different content.

A few features upcoming in Ginger:

• Added 150 Premium Widgets
• Listen to your favorite web radio stations through Netvibes
• 2 GB of free storage space for every registered user
  

Ginger also looks poised to springboard into the next generation of the social internet. You can tag interesting blog posts, pictures, and video from your Netvibes page and then share them with your friends and family.

The official release of Ginger is in January. For now, you can check out Netvibes current release or visit the Ginger preview page.

[Via Cybernet]

Every morning, your alarm clock wakes you. Throughout the day, it tells you the time, and maybe plays some static with a little bit of music thrown in. If it's real high tech, maybe it wakes you with tunes from your mp3 player, piped through tinny-sounding speakers.

When it comes down to it, an alarm clock is a lot like a toaster. It's an appliance. It is cold, and impersonal. It has no soul. And it certainly can't do what a Chumby can.

Chumby is an internet gadget disguised as an alarm clock. It's a small, potato shaped computer that plays widgets (small programs). Because "Chumby hacking" is encouraged, users having access to Flash can make widgets for their own use, or make them publicly available on the Chumby website.

We've had a chance to play with a production Chumby for about two months now. We love the little spud, in spite of the fact it wakes us up too early in the morning.

There are currently some killer widgets available for Chumby. When Chumby is "officially" released in early 2008, we expect that Flash programmers will have a field day.

In its continuing quest to keep up with yesterday, Friendster has launched a developer platform and a handful of 3rd party widgets that users can already add to their profiles. We kid, we kid. From what we understand, Friendster is huge in Asia these days, but in the US, the new kids on the block like MySpace and Facebook have kind of stolen the limelight.

Well, if you can't beat them, join them right? Facebook owes at least part of its success to the site's open platform for developing applications. Now Friendster is taking the same approach, not only by opening up its own developer platform, but also by signing on to Google's OpenSocial.

Friendster still has a long way to go. Right now, there only a handful of widgets available, compared with hundreds of Facebook applications. But if you want to add a photo slideshow, biorhythm chart, or even add a VoIP "call me" button to your Friendster profile, there are widgets that can help. In other words, we find ourselves much more tempted to actually use Friendster today than we did yesterday.

[via WebWare]