springwidgetslogoFox Interactive Media introduced SpringWidgets this week. At first glance they seem much like other widgets we've seen, and even more limited. The initial set of widgets are an RSS reader, sports scoreboard, clock, and NFL sports tracker.

You can embed the widgets on any Web page. For example, I'm embedding the clock widget here:


Now the fun part. If you've downloaded SpringWidgets, and you click on the green 'sun' icon above, the widget would appear on your desktop. That way, you can easily get a copy of the widget I've put on my site (or MySpace, Xanga, Blogger page, etc.).

On the desktop, SpringWidgets functions much like Yahoo Widgets, Microsoft Vista Gizmos, and so on. The big drawback is that it's XP only, so Mac and Linux users are out of luck for now. There are some user interface quirks to SpringWidgets that make it annoying to use - there's no key combination to show or hide all widgets, for example, and if one widget is hidden and you add another widget, you can't hide the second widget until you bring the first one back.

But the biggest drawback is launching SpringWidgets with only four widgets developed - especially since two of them are sports-related. This concept is crying out for more widgets. The company is providing a developers kit and sample widgets, but it remains to be seen whether developers will jump on the SpringWidget bandwagon…or if they'll stick to known widget providers where they can get a broader audience immediately.

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