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Gadgets Unbind from Portals
The concept of a web Portal as a framework for integrating information from many different sources into one consolidated view has been popular for some time. Portals are typically composed of pluggable user-interface components called portlets or gadgets. Portlets are powered by Web Services and typically are programmed to be able to pull in data from a variety of corporate and third party data sources. But portlets were built on framework components of the Portal. Portlets were only interchangeable among portals built using the same Portal infrastructure.
Now there’s a new breed of mini-webapps known as Gadgets and Widgets, next generation portlets. They live outside the browser on your desktop, but they are Internet aware and are able to exchange and update information via Web Service calls. These gadgets are based on a new set of platforms, like Yahoo! Widget Engine, live.com, Apple Dashboard, and Google Desktop. Here are a couple of examples from Yahoo!:
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This new generation of Widgets in effect unbinds portlets from Portal containers. The framework has been repositioned from existing as a container application housed in a browser to a one-time install framework that works at the desktop level that is provided by one of the new brands of widget containers, like those mentioned above. These gadget frameworks by-pass the browser and look to form the beginning of a new generation of web applications.
Gadgets show up everywhere in the mainstream web, like on MySpace, driven by data coming from places like YouTube. In particular they’re being used frequently for notifications: do I have new email or has someone outbid me on EBay? When used in this way, standard messaging tools like email may change.
Gadgets are sure to make an appearance in the business world. In fact, they already are. Salesforce.com is a leading force, making ‘mashups’ and widgets available as different ways to get at information being tracked.
What could gadgets do for the world of ECM? Some ideas include to-do list gadgets populated with Workflow tasks, a user’s working list gadget that displays repository documents currently being worked on, or a gadget to do quick document searchs limited to enterprise repository documents. Using a Web Service interface to the ECM repository, like that of Formtek’s, any of these could be created.
