Yahoo’s TV Internet Widgets

August 21, 2008 in Technology & Science

I just saw this over on ReadWriteWeb. Basically, what Yahoo are planning to do is give people the chance to have widgets display at the bottom of their TV, kind of like a news ticker on Sky/BBC News, only these will be pulling directly from the internet and will be fully customisable!

Yahoo are also opening this up for anyone to make a widget that people can select to view on their TV’s. Some examples proposed so far have been news tickers, weather updates etc. One interesting comment I read under the ReadWriteWeb article was a from somebody delighted at the thought of the twitter widget being at the bottom of his tv screen, so they could watch tv at the same time as their friends and have a kind of a group chat experience. E.g. “Peter says: ‘what a goal, that was amazing!” coming up at the bottom of your screen when you’re at home watching a football match! I think it’s really clever and could definitely create a new level of interactivity with what has always been a distinctly one-way medium.

I really can’t wait to see what widgets get made for this. What does anyone else hope to see? Or does anyone else plan on having a go at making a widget or two? (I may give it a bash myself!) I think some sort of RSS headline reader could be useful, or maybe an Alarm widget, that reminds you to do stuff, or what TV show’s are on, when you’re watching TV.