Analyst: Consumers don't want widgets on their TVs
Amidst all the announcements about widgets this week was one ominous note: a survey from Strategy Analytics saying that consumers it surveyed weren't all that hot on widgets.
Well, they're right -- and wrong. As Disraeli (or Mark Twain, depending on your preference) used to say, there's three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics. And the way you design a survey can make a big difference in the sorts of answers you get.
Yahoo leverages TV widgets in rebound attempt
Yahoo is trying to bounce back from its financial woes with the announcement at CES of blue-chip partnerships around its TV widgets, a technology pointed to by some pundits as something that will transform television as we know it today.
At CES press conferences packed with reporters from all over the world, top manufacturers like Sony and Samsung unveiled plans to include Yahoo's widget technology in future HDTVs so as to help consumers customize their converged TV/Internet experiences.
Opera to launch new browser toolkit for game machines, TVs
At CES, Opera is launching a new edition of its toolkit for building browsers that run on gaming machines, set-top boxes, and other places beyond garden variety PC and cell phone environments.
The "Devices" toolkit -- already used for Nintendo's Wii -- now allows for development of mini-browsers with complete Internet capabilities.