I've been interested in Widgets/Gadgets for quite some time, and have written several blog posts on the subject. I've also written a few gadgets. The most popular one is the FreeSMS gadget. With more than 5250 downloads it's the most popular Norwegian gadget at the moment. So far all my gadgets have been targeted at consumers and end-users. I think this is about to change as more and more businesses see gadgets/widgets as a way to provide users with easy access to important data. Microsoft Norway arranged a contest among their ISV's on who could write the coolest Sidebar Gadget extending their application. Visma won the contest with a set of gadgets providing users with key performance indicators from their ERP system.
Last Friday Computerworld, the largest news papers for the Nowegian computer industry, published an interesting article written by Arne Søiland on gadgets/widgets (17.august, issue #27). The article discusses widgets/gadgets in general and how they bring the service oriented architecture all the way to the desktop and end user. Unfortunally the article isn't available online, but if you can get your hand on last Fridays issue of Computerworld I strongly recommend reading the article. I totally agree with the message of the article that these small, simple applications is an excellent way to make information more accessible to end users. Instead of having to open up some line-of-business application and click through several screens of information to figure out what you need to take action on, gadgets and XML feeds can push this information directly to your desktop. Clicking a link or button in the gadget can bring load up the business app, pre-loaded with the item you want to take action on.
"People are using this at home and are asking why they can't get the same thing at work" - Morten Strand commenting on widgets, IBM
I expect that more and more businesses are going to include gadgets/widgets as a natural part of their service oriented architecture. The .NET 3.5 release adds SyndicationFeed and REST/POX support to Windows Communication Foundation services, making it even easier to provide XML data to your gadgets. Hopefully I'll be writing my first work related gadget in a not a too distant future.