Digital Home Thoughts: Yahoo! Widgets 3.0 Released

Yahoo! has unveiled Widgets 3.0, the latest release of the popular widget console formerly known as Konfabulator. This release introduces a number of new bundled widgets, but mainly is focused on branding the Yahoo! name and services into the widget framework. The new Maps feature is a direct clone of Google maps, I must say. (Click on the screenshot above for a full look.)

I just downloaded the software on my machine and I am very impressed. It works almost exactly like Dashboard in OSX Tiger. Well, almost. My only gripe is that, unlike Dashboard, Yahoo! Widgets does not hide its widget interface when you don't want them on your desktop. However, you can set it to hide widgets manually by setting each widget's window preferences to "Show only in heads up display" mode.