Yahoo has announced the launch of their latest round of desktop widget, Yahoo Widgets 4. Now I’m not a big fan of yahoo but this improved version has got alot interesting features that it’s hard to ignore. Yahoo claimed to have an amazing 4,000 widgets for you to choose, ranging from news feeds to games to utilities tools (yes they have anti-virus widgets too).

Yahoo! Widgets or Konfabulator is a collapsible docking palette that allows you to dock to any side of your OS. The docking interface is sleek and gorgeous to look at with all the added widgets arranged nicely in a tile like manner. If you find the dock obtrusive, you can even close it and it will sit on your system tray. I love system tray application simply because it doesn’t clutter up my taskbar area. For starter, I recommend getting the Yahoo! Widget Gallery before anything else. It allows you to search and download additional widgets faster without the need to open a web browser.

Desktop widget, not to be confused with web widget which lives inside a browser and completely rely on browser technologies is coming back in a big way. Yahoo isn’t the only one offering desktop widgets, just few days ago Yourminis well-known for their web widgets also roll out its own desktop version built on Apollo platform. The introduction of Apollo which allows application to run across all platform will definitely see more desktop widgets been developed.

The strength of desktop widget lies in their ability to mashup content from various sources. It is able to pull content out of the browser and integrating it into your desktop. As such, desktop widget is often been compare to a web browser in terms of functionality and accessibility. Desktop widget is also great for offline use with tools that is able to tap into your local reasources. Despite the many advantages, it seems that right now desktop widget only appeals to the tech-savvy user. I believed it will take some time before it is been embraced by the mainstream crowd.