Connected World?

It's becoming impossible to buy a CE product these days that isn't "connected" in some way. Of course, notebooks and PCs have been "online" in one way or another since the last century but today cellphones, games consoles, handhelds, Blu-ray players (of course) and now TVs are nothing if not connected.

Yahoo's TV Widgets are a case in point. The tube has long been a single ended device – mindless video in and photons out – with nothing as a back-channel, unless you count the "press red now" phone-line connected 'interactive button'. Not so long ago, TV manufacturers would say that's the natural order of things. "Flat screens are receivers of information, let other devices take care of phoning home." Well Yahoo and Intel dared to think otherwise.

The trouble with TV screen real estate is that there's only so much of it. And most of what you're looking at is programming. The average couch potato isn't going to be happy if the screen is obliterated with an interactive dialog box, just as the home team scores a goal. Fortunately, many camera operators have been schooled into putting the main line of interest into the upper third of the screen, leaving the lower part free of tedious information.

Into this potential void comes Yahoo TV Widgets, together with the 'Widget button' on the TV remote, something that we all look likely to press in the near future. Research shows that almost all computer owners between 16 and 25 are online as they watch TV. Now Yahoo have put the web ON the TV, along with a whole lot more.

There's already quite an array of Widgets on offer, from Blockbuster OnDemand thru eBay and Yahoo Weather to photo sharing on Flickr. And just when you thought it was all going to be Yahoo branded stuff, they announce that ANYONE can develop a Widget, using the free-to-download development kit. Now that's clever – and if Apple hadn't invented it first with the App Store, it would be full marks for originality.

What the heck, give Yahoo due credit. There are companies out there that would charge hundreds of dollars for a tool set to create pop-up widgets, and by doing so they would kill the idea before it launched. The key thing that will get TV Widgets onto every TV screen by 2012 is giving developers free rein to develop Widget ideas that no-one anticipated. And when ideas are allowed to roam free, the billionth Widget download can't be far behind.

How about a TV Widget map, that lets you locate Teheran or Tahiti when they're in the news? Or a Widget donut locator that dials your order through? Maybe a TV Widget to keep an eye on match scores elsewhere in the league or perhaps a Widget alarm that alerts you when the doorbell rings or the toast pops up? There are ten developers out there for every one of those ideas, and several thousand more who will come up with something unexpected – and no doubt profitable – and we'll all wonder why why we didn't think of it ourselves.

But there's another aspect to Yahoo YV Widgets. The basic Widget engine can be transplanted into other devices. And other devices, particularly disc-based media devices, can make use of the same protocol. Yes folks, why not put TV Widgets on your next Blu-ray title? The App can reside on the disc, be downloaded to the TV and - this could be neat - it can be updated interactively, providing a selling opportunity for "The Simpsons" season 22 before it has even been shot.

Advertisers and Premium online services will love Yahoo TV Widgets, they'll get audience metrics at the click of a remote and when your Blu-ray title gets its award, you can air the director's comments without wishing you'd invested a little more in BD Live.

There's a lot more neat stuff to come and the really clever thing that Intel and Yahoo have done is to get the major players in the CE business to sign up first. As Patrick Barry, Vice President of Connected TV at Yahoo said recently, "TV hasn't changed, but we have!" TV Widgets could finally bring televison sets into the 21st century.