One of the startups coming in at the Demo ‘09 Conference, Sobees is of value to any social network addict – and everyone is these days. Using the intuitive interface you can create your own desktop widgets, each customized to your own preferences – from Twitter Search on a topic to pictures uploaded by your friends on Flickr – you can mix and mash to create your own personal news room. The customization potential of this app is literally unlimited and it’s dead simple to use:

• Pick a template

• Pick a service, a search term or a RSS feed.

Other functionalities worth mentioning:

• Your status is published on all the social networks you’re logged into.
• There are integrated weather notifications.
• Also Flickr photo uploading.

But not all is good about Sobees – because unfortunately there is no Mac or Linux version, and the Windows version is based on .NET Framework 3.5 which not even Microsoft used to create their most recent operating system, Windows 7. In fact, there supposedly was a rule against any code written in .NET.

• On my up-to-date, fully-patched and cleaned Windows XP system, Sobees was sluggish, froze 2-3 seconds when adding new widgets and there’s clearly something wrong with the Anti-aliasing of the titles.
• The Search function only works with Yahoo! and Windows Live! Search, a big disappointment for an app that is all about customizability.
• Uses too much memory, 125MB with only one widget open. Too much transparency, translucency and other flashy effects; a black stylish interface would have achieved a better effect without using so much resources.

Like David Chartier from Ars stated, it’s really hard to stay excited about Sobees after the initial jump; while the ‘taskbar for the web’ concept is original, it certainly wasn’t developed enough – but after all this is a beta.

You can get Sobees from here and help the developers by submitting feedback. As always I look forward to your comments about desktop applications for web apps.

A little history

On June 6th, 2008, Google Gadgets Team:

The Windows and Mac versions of Google Desktop has provided gadget hosting functionality on Windows and Mac for a while now and the Linux version of Google Gadgets will extend this platform to Linux users. By enabling cross-platform gadgets, a large library of existing gadgets are immediately available to Linux users. In addition, gadget developers will benefit from a much larger potential user base without having to learn a new API.

Google Gadgets for Linux is an open source project available under the Apache license. The Google Open Source blog invites everyone to contribute with bug reports and fixes on Google Code.

Installation

Binaries

Depending on your linux distribution, you can either opt to install via the binary packages, which are available for Ubuntu 8.04, Fedora 8/9, openSUSE 10.3/11, Slackware and FreeBSD on this page.

For Ubuntu, the Google Code page points to a SuSE repository; Installing using these binaries is a bit disappointing – with no more than 8 packages to download and manually install. A better solution is via GetDeb.

Build from source code

If you want to get your hands dirty and compile Google Gadgets yourself, here’s the step by step process. You can read through the whole (very long) How-to Build Guide here.

• wget http://google-gadgets-for-linux.googlecode.com/files/google-gadgets-for-linux-0.10.3.tar.bz2
• tar zxvf google-gadgets-for-linux-0.10.3.tar.bz2
• cd google-gadgets-for-linux-0.10.3/
• sudo apt-get install build-essential zip flex desktop-file-utils shared-mime-info zlib1g-dev libxml2-dev libdbus-1-dev libx11-dev libxt-dev libltdl3-dev (for Ubuntu 8.04) or libltdl7-dev (for Ubuntu 8.10) libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-dev network-manager-dev libstartup-notification0-dev xulrunner-1.9-dev libgtk2.0-dev librsvg2-dev ibcurl4-gnutls-dev or libcurl4-openssl-dev libqt4-dev
• sudo ldconfig
• ../../configure –enable-debug
• sudo make install
• export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib
• ggl-gtk

Interface & Usability

They UI remains pretty much unchanged from the Windows version, and requires a compositioning engine like Compiz for the effects. There’s nothing really ground-breaking here – the same black transparent sidebar we all know.

• You can run “ggl-gtk –ns” to run the widget engine without the sidebar.
• You can load the widgets at start-up automatically by adding them to the ‘Sessions’. See above screenshot.
• The gtk version did not slow down my start-up time, and the app didn’t crash. Some of the widgets specifically designed for windows may not work properly but do not hang the program.
• For every widget not created by Google a pop-up appears notifying you.
• Installation of new widgets doesn’t take more than 3-5 seconds.

Conclusion

While some may argue that screenlets, widgets and gadgets are a waste of workspace and resources I have some good uses for them:

• I keep 3 clocks with the West Coast/Central and East Coast time + London. This is extremely useful when publishing and calling overseas relatives.
• Google Calendar tells me what classes I have to attend during the day; when are the articles due.
• The battery meter gives a more clear look at the status so I don’t have to squint at the monitor.
• Ah, and the plant is really cute.

Why is everyone obsessed with having the weather on their desktop? If I want to know today’s weather, I look out of the window.             -oobuntu

• The weather widget helps me pick the right clothes for the day – by giving me the high and the low.

Different people have different uses – so I want to hear from you. Are widgets useful?