Niall Kennedy kicked off his second annual event by telling us that we’d be hearing 33 speakers and some 27 hours of programming (!) over the next two days. Totaling up all the breakouts, I guess. He talked about the Vista Sidebar, now out 9 months, for which there’s already 1500 widgets….and about Mac OS Leopard (rumored to be coming Oct 26), which will have a button in the browser now to create a widget for you (and he noted the Mac OS is up to 3200 desktop widgets now after two years). Widgetsummit1
He said Leopard will have a brand-new widget IDE that "will make things a lot easier" and a desktop widget that will "grab stuff on the web for you, so you see it in shrunken form." He noted that, in line with Newsweek declaring 2006 the "Year of the Widget," there’s really been a proliferation of widgets on personal home pages, in blog sidebars, and in social networks.