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Users of the next Adobe Creative Suite may be able to mix and mash up the applications with online content and third-party tools.

In a bid to make workspaces more nimble, Adobe Systems is considering making parts of Photoshop and other Creative Suite applications available for users to manipulate within Flash widgets, according to a blog post Monday by John Nack, product manager of Photoshop.

The capability to bring tools from the Creative Suite to the desktop or the Web with Flash or Flex could lead to novel ways of exploring Adobe's expensive, hulking software. Users have mashed up Google Maps, for instance, to display apartment listings, ecological pollution, and even UFO sightings.

"The appeal of extending one's app with lightweight, cross-platform, network-aware widgets is so obvious that we were busy building support in my first app some eight years ago--and we had to build our own Flash Player clone to do it!" Nack wrote.

Developers would ideally be able to write one bunch of code rather than six separate chunks to create widgets for panels from Photoshop, Illustrator vector illustration, and InDesign page layout software, Nack added.

Adobe made its flagship photo-editing software available online with the March release of Photoshop Express.

The company aims to tell the public more about the next iteration of its Creative Suite on May 27.

A prerelease, beta edition of Flash Player 10 became available Tuesday via Adobe Labs. New features include effects for 3D-rendering effects and text-rendering enhancements.

Before Wikipedia, there was Britannica.

Really, young whippersnappers, having an organized stack of the neatly bound heavy encyclopedia volumes on library shelves was a status-making must in many U.S. households as recently as the 1990s.

With the invention of the CD-ROM came Encarta, owned by Microsoft, which enabled easy cutting and pasting of encyclopedia content for students focused on speed and ease of research. It became a quick hit in school libraries yet the enemy of many teachers, who now had to add to their curriculum a lesson on the evils of cut-and-paste research, er, plagiarism.

The popularity of free, anyone-can-edit Wikipedia has made academia's battle against encyclopedia referencing--and the publishing industry's efforts to sell reference material--tougher than ever. Encyclopaedia Britannica, which has embraced e-mail marketing to keep its hardback business in, well, business (I've received several promotional messages in the past few months), is now making Web moves to take back its authoritative presence in the industry.

The publisher's Britannica WebShare initiative, launched April 13 with Twitter streaming of a daily topic, announced on Friday a service called Britannica Widgets, with which bloggers can "post an entire cluster of related Encyclopaedia Britannica articles" for free.

Britannica also is offering "people who publish with some regularity on the Internet, be they bloggers, Webmasters, or writers," free access to Britannica's online content, with registration.

To use the widgets, anyone can now "copy and paste the several lines of code associated with each widget as HTML into the appropriate place on your site," according to a Britannica WebShare post. "Any readers who click on a link will get the entire Britannica article on the subject, even if access to the article normally requires a subscription. Really. Try it."

Currently posted Britannica widgets, such as the one here of the domestic cat, include colorful entries ranging from lizards to Nobel Prizes. Many more are expected in the coming weeks.

Correction: the original article misattributed comments to the two Google executives I interviewed. The attributions have been changed.

Google's move on Wednesday to open up an online shop for third-party Google Apps add-ons, called Google Solutions Marketplace, may make more people take Web widgets more seriously--even enterprise developers.

Widgets, or gadgets, allow people to embed small applets within a Web page for things like displaying the weather, or set alarms on a PC or other Web device.

A motion chart made with Google gadgets, a way to customize Google Docs.

(Credit: Google)

But Google Gadgets is also one way that Google encourages software developers to customize Google Apps.

In March, Google launched a visualization API (application programming interface) for its Google Docs and a gallery of gadgets that use the API. With it, people can display data from a Google Web spreadsheet in a variety of ways, like a pie chart, map, time chart, or funnel chart.

But that visualization API is the beginning of more to come, Google executives told me back in March. And gadgets allow you to tap those APIs to customize Google applications.

The ability to tailor applications for a specific purpose or industry is very important to businesses, and thus any company trying to sell to them.

Microsoft refers to Office as a "platform" that can be customized with its flagship Visual Studio programming tool.

Salesforce.com has invested heavily in AppExchange and its Force.com hosted development platform to create an ecosystem of third-party add-ons and hosted applications.

The advantage of the gadgets approach is that it's relatively simple--a Webmaster could put something together. Also, gadgets are portable to other Web pages, like iGoogle's customized home page.

"Gadgets are a very approachable coding model and you can do surprisingly useful things very quickly," said Sam Schillace, the engineering director who oversees collaborative applications at Google. "We haven't been shy about talking about programming the Web in smaller pieces and gadgets work really well."

Another benefit to the gadget approach, from Google's perspective, is that they are "native to the Internet," in that they are written using Ajax and designed to run in the "cloud."

Google is hosting its second developer conference in May, called Google I/O, to encourage developers to write more applications for the Web. On Monday, it launched Google App Engine, a place where they can test and host those applications.

Jonathan Rochelle, senior product manager who manages the spreadsheet editor at Google Docs, said he wrote a gadget to translate content in Google Docs. Another simple example is creating charts for soccer team statistics, he said.

But in the context of a business, one could imagine more complicated applications. For example, a business could mash up information from an order management system and customer database and then present it in a Google spreadsheet for its customers to view over the Web.

How far Google's gadgets approach will go into business is not clear yet as it's early on. But it's obvious that gadgets makes sense for businesspeople--even SAP is doing it.

Now it's a question of how far developers can push the limits of this gadget business.

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.--Widget maker RockYou is rumored to have hired Morgan Stanley to raise a new round of financing that would give it a valuation of $400 million, according to a report from the tech gossip site Valleywag.

But venture capitalists here at the Dow Jones Web Ventures conference say that whether true or not, that kind of valuation is frothy, especially considering the faltering U.S. economy and the nascent business model for widgets. (RockYou makes Facebook's Super Wall application.) According to a couple of venture capitalists familiar with RockYou, the widget maker was looking for a buyer in recent months, so that option could still be on the table along with raising money.

No doubt, companies that make Web applications are popular investments. RockYou has previously raised $1.5 million from Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Rival Slide recently raised $50 million for a company valuation of $500 million, for example. But investments in widget makers may start to come down to Earth, those VCs say.

"I don't think these deals are taking into account the market," according to one VC.

Google says "gadgets" and DoubleClick says "widgets."

Semantics is probably the last thing on Google's mind right now as it starts integrating DoubleClick and its online ad technologies into its business. But it's something they'll have to figure out, nonetheless.

Google's new DoubleClick business, a recent acquisition following U.S. and European regulator scrutiny, announced on Monday that it is adding rich media widget ads to the repertoire of online advertising types it serves up to customers.

Widget ads aim to be interactive and clever enough to entice Web surfers to grab them and embed them onto their own sites or social network pages. They are the newest rage in viral marketing and when done well, they can actually work.

They are becoming quite the trend, and getting a lot of attention and money--22 percent of marketers surveyed by eMarketer recently said they used widgets as a social media marketing application last year, and that percentage is expected to double this year.

The sharing component of the ad widget service is powered by Gigya, an advertising network for widget makers that recently raised $9.5 million.

Meanwhile, Google started offering Gadget Ads on its content network last year.

Widget makers aren't just drawing big money from investors, now they're luring the venture capitalists themselves.

On Thursday, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners' Will Price left his post as general partner to join Widgetbox as its chief executive officer. Widgetbox operates a large community of widgets--roughly 41,000 pieces of software in the form of games or gadgets--which it distributes to sites and social networks like MySpace.com or Facebook. The company has raised $14.5 million since it was founded in April 2006, from investors including Sequoia Capital, NCD Investors, and Hummer Winblad.

Price, who worked on early financing of Widgetbox, said he left Hummer Winblad for two reasons. One was his desire to once again run a start-up; the other was the promise he sees in the widget market.

"We're seeing a huge sea change going on in the Web--the model used to be about driving traffic to one domain. Now we're talking about a model of syndication of the Web or deconstruction of the Web," Price said in an interview with CNET News.com. "This is a company at the nexus of those things."

The news comes on the heels of big investments in widget rivals. ShareThis, maker of a widget to share content with friends, raised $15 million on Thursday from Draper Fisher Jurvetson and others. Earlier this year, widget ad provider Gigya said it drew $9.5 million from Benchmark Capital, Mayfield Fund and others.

Price estimates that the widget market is worth between $20 million and $30 million annually, and most of that money is put into the services to build them. As for advertising on widgets, sales are still just a drop in the bucket (or rather, dew in the bucket) compared with total online advertising sales. That's a wide gap between the amount of exposure people have to widgets on Facebook or even publisher sites like The New York Times. ComScore estimated that roughly 650 million came in contact with a widget in December.

"Anyone who can close that differential will see a lot of money," he said.

Widgetbox is developing an advertising platform to make money from its collection of widgets, according to Price.

Price wrote about his move on Techcrunch.

On Wednesday or Thursday, Yahoo is going to revamp its directory of desktop widgets for the Yahoo Widget Engine. This is warm-up for a whole new version of the Engine, Yahoo Widget Engine 4.5, that arrives the week of November 27.

End users won't see much that's new in the engine itself, but they'll see a shift in how it is pitched. The new directory should be easier to navigate and more approachable. Yahoo, instead of trying to sell end-users on the engine and then push the widgets, will instead begin to pitch the utility and entertainment value of the widgets, and try to slip the download and installation of the engine onto the widgets' coattails.

The strategy makes sense for the product and for consumers, many of whom have a widget engine of some sort on their computers already; Windows Vista and Apple's OS X both run desktop gadgets. Adobe's AIR platform is also impinging on Yahoo's engine.

Coming soon: Yahoo's new widget gallery.

(Credit: Yahoo)

Later this year, Yahoo will begin to push widgets on its various megasites, an approach necessary to getting the engine onto enough desktops so developers are attracted to working in it.

Speaking of developers, Yahoo Senior Product Manager Jonathan Strauss, in a frustratingly elliptical interview, let on that the new engine will have "new ways to exploit the power of the desktop." He was referring to new tools for creating widgets. I think the best thing Yahoo could do is make it possible to use Yahoo Pipes as a development platform for widgets, but Strauss told me I "might be reading too much into" his statements.

I like the Yahoo Widget Engine, but it is product from a previous era--before Vista and its Sidebar, Google Gadgets, OS X Gadgets, Netvibes' Universal Widget Architecture, and Adobe AIR. I don't think running a discrete, desktop-only widget engine is a solid business today. Fortunately, another thing we'll hear about in a few weeks is Yahoo's plans for widgets on platforms other than the desktop--i.e, the browser and mobile devices. We might see a Yahoo partnership announcement with Web widget platform ClearSpring. It would make sense. The two companies' platforms are complementary. Also, Strauss told me he went to college with ClearSpring CEO Hooman Rafdar. Putting their products together could be a happy reunion.

Netvibes CEO Tariq Krim Twittered earlier today from the Widget Summit, "Just finished my talk at Widget Summit announcing that Netvibes widgets works now on Vista, Live.com, and Yahoo Widgets." This is great news for widget fans, like me, who are often frustrated to find that a module they like on one platform (say, Netvibes) isn't available on another (Yahoo) or vice versa. Today, when it comes to widgets, no matter which platform you use, you lose.

Netvibes' Universal Widget API (UWA) is a big step in the right direction. It's been developing since March of this year and is finally reaching a level of refinement that makes it usable by consumers. (For the inside word, go to the developer's site.)

This is Opera with two widgets running. The one on the left is a Netvibes UWA widget added from Netvibes' directory. The one on the right came from Opera's own directory.

Although the technology works as advertised, early adopters will find their choices limited. Of the nearly 90,000 Netvibes widgets, only 1,000 or so are built in the new UWA format. I found that many of the most popular (and oldest) widgets were not yet available for other platforms. Likewise many RSS-based widgets. Krim told me Netvibes will be converting widgets over the next few weeks. Here's the current directory of UWA widgets.

UWA Netvibes widgets can be easily added to iGoogle, Apple Dashboard, Opera, Windows Vista, and Windows Live. Yahoo's Widget Engine isn't an option yet for any modules, though. Krim jumped the gun on announcing it.

The procedure for adding a Netvibes UWA widget to a different platform varies, but is straightforward. For Web platforms, like iGoogle, you just click on the iGoogle button from the Netvibes widget directory page, and then confirm when you're redirected to your iGoogle page. For desktop platforms, like Vista or Opera, you download and install the widget file from within the target app or OS itself, and click through a security pop-up.

While not as universal--yet--as the acronym aspires to, the concept of platform-independent widgets is great. It's what real people want. It's also what developers need: it reduces the risk of developing a widget, and could encourage developers to put more creativity and effort into their work.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Widgetbox today announced App Accelerator, a step-by-step guide and tool for creating Facebook applications from Widgetbox widgets. The blandly named App Accelerator shrewdly connects the community developers of Widgetbox's widget marketplace with Facebook's burgeoning user community. Talk about viral marketing.

The conversion works by adapting Widgetbox's Flash and HTML/JavaScript code for Facebook compatibility. There's a lot of link-swapping involved, and much of App Accelerator's ease-of-use can be attributed to Widgetbox's assumption of several routing URLs.

The checklist guides you through Facebook application creation.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Widgetbox has done its usability homework in creating a friendly, check-listed step-by-step guide that walks users through what might otherwise be a confusing process. Still, I ran into some problems using App Accelerator, including some URL pasting mistakes that rendered my new application useless and significantly delayed this review. This is something I hope Widgetbox and Facebook will both limit in the future with appropriate error sensing and alerts.

Since the proprietary service only converts Widgetbox widgets, I needed to begin by registering and building a widget. I used Widgetbox's Blidget tool (read Webware review) to create a widget of "my" blog (I used Webware.com, of course.)

Next I needed to register as a Facebook developer; easily done through Widgetbox's prominent link. After converting the blog into a widget, I was offered the opportunity to "promote" it on Facebook. Don't be fooled; this isn't App Accelerator's work. Rather, it crashed my Firefox browser, then posted an image of my blidget to my Facebook mini feed, as a video.... Read more