Yahoo! Widget Engine

Yesterday we got you organized... so today we'll clutter your desktop. Yahoo! Widgets (formerly known as Konfabulator) lets you put all kinds of things directly on your desktop, from RSS/Atom news feeds (shown here), to the weather, to system meters, to various cartoon characters that say things when you click on them. Ever since Yahoo changed it from Konfabulator to Yahoo Widget Engine, they've been putting out craploads of Yahoo-integrated widgets (day planner, mail, notepad, etc.). I like to use the Day Planner widget at work so that I can see my Outlook calendar events for the day, as well as my to-do list.

If for some reason you're anti-Yahoo, or you just want to see what alternatives are out there, here are a couple others:

• Google Desktop added support for dragging panels off the sidebar and onto your desktop in version 3. It's free, and also has powerful desktop search capabilities.
• Stardock DesktopX is not free, and I've never used it myself, but my co-worker claims that this was the one that started it all.

- Kornhornio