That didn’t take long. Yahoo just announced that they’ve bought Konfabulator, and now already they’ve got widgets available for download, free of charge.

Widgets are small and lightweight applications easily accessible from the desktop—it was Konfabulator that made them famous on OSX before they moved them to Windows and Apple launched a similar suite in it’s latest OS, 10.4 Tiger. I think this really makes a lot of sense for Yahoo!, who like other high-powered portals have a preponderance of data and limited avenues of distribution to users. They certainly have the cash, ($755 million last quarter) and while new tech like RSS feeds are sexy there are still only so many routes for web content after the browser.

There’s been a lot of additional goodness in the tech world that I also can’t neglect:

• Forbe’s Best of the Web is up.
  Each and every time Forbes publishes this list I scratch my head at more than a few links, “if this is some of the best, what the heck am I used to reading..?” Even so they’ve got a lot of great sites covered.
• Microsoft’s Virtual Earth is live.
  It looks like a very strong tool and should be good motivation for Google to keep pushing the boundaries.
• News.com.com.com reports Tipping Point is offering a bounty for security bugs.
  This kind of thing doesn’t surprise me, and I think solutions of this nature are going to become more and more common. OSS has taught a lot of people communal effort and communication is just as effective as closed-door development, even if it’s unconventional.
• Lussumo is a very promising new message board app.
  I’ve been very frustrated with the security issues surrounding phpbb, and I’m very intrigued by a fresh look at what’s really essential in a message board. It looks like the developer’s have studied up Google and 37 signals for design inspiration—and that’s a good thing.