YourMinis puts widgets on the desktop via Apollo

YourMinis, the popular single page aggregator service, has launched desktop integration with its library of over 14 million widgets, using Adobe's Apollo technology. After installing the Apollo runtime and the YourMinis Apollo plug-in on your PC or Mac, you can simply click on any widget in the YourMinis library and click "Add to Desktop." Likewise, there's the option to send any widget to the Web if you'd prefer it to stay on one of your YourMinis pages. It's really well-done.

Once they're on your desktop, you can drag them around, change colors, transparency levels, and various settings for each widget--the usual features that come with a full-fledged widget application.

Mac users likely will be uninterested with the new feature, as they've already got a built-in widget engine with OS X's Dashboard. PC users, on the other hand, now have another free way to put widgets on their desktop besides Yahoo Widgets and Google Desktop. As we've mentioned before, Apollo is still pretty early on in development, and the YourMinis widgets are RAM-hungry. With just four open, they were taking up more CPU cycles and memory than Microsoft Word and Outlook combined. It will be interesting to see how Adobe addresses this problem further along in Apollo's development.

See also News.com's take on how Apollo is 'one-upping' Ajax.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

[wriker]

why are widgets popular?

Are they just esthetically pleasing to look at? If all they do is open applications, why can't you just click a shortcut or an icon on the taskbar to do the same thing? I just don't see the appeal.

[wriker]

why are they popular

I don't see the appeal if all they do is open apps. Can't you do the same thing clicking on a shortcut or icon on the task bar? Why download another memory hungry program when you already have icons on your screen or task bar? I just can't see it.

[hwoolery]

Memory issues

Hi, I'm one of the developers at yourminis.com. I'd just like to note that this is a very early alpha release of both Apollo and our application, with no optimization on our end yet. Expect the memory and CPU usage to drop very far down in future releases.

[Josh.Lowensohn]

Sounds good

Hey thanks for reading and giving us the head's up. As I mentioned, it's to be expected.

We're more excited by the technology and usage.

[dmland]

These _may_ be interesting to Mac users...

Some of us despise Apple's decision to stick widgets in a separate layer. Thus, some of us have adopted Yahoo! Widgets (formerly Konfabulator), because they are not foolishly separated from the rest of our work. YourMini's desktop widgets are an alternative to Yahoo! Widgets.