Widgets for Business IntelligenceNov 6

Brooks Jordan 0 comments

Widgets. I'm not particularly fond of this term to describe the chunks of code that are being embedded in web pages and blogs. This code brings content from somewhere else on the Web to where you are - for yourself, as a "starter page" if you will, or as part of the content you're publishing for other people. The word "widget" isn't descriptive, it seems to me, because it suggests "gadget," which is a device with practical use but often thought of as a novelty.

But there's so much more that could be done with these things, which in fact are micro, modular Web services. Today they're mostly used for weather, news, and images like the one from National Geographic pictured here that's available on Apple's website and meant specifically for its computers. But what gets me excited about them is business intelligence. That is, they could be used to gather the information, text, images, and video, needed by people in a company to start understanding what's significant and what isn't.

Widgets are made out of XML, so are RSS feeds. Which is why Steve Rubel writes in a recent post that widgets are "glorified RSS". Yes, exactly, they're RSS feeds, plus.

What I'm picturing here (and I wish I had a good example of widgets in the enterprise, but I don't, although I'm sure one or two exist) is a Netvibes type of interface, very modular and fluid, that any employee could quickly customize with widgets (or whatever the next-gen name is for these things) to track intelligence and research from multiple sources. Some of the widgets could come off the public Web, but others could be hooked up to services like OneSource and LexisNexis.

Even better, though, is that within this interface could also be next-gen widgets acting as windows into Lotus Notes (Hannover) or Salesforce.com or Tableau Software - whatever platform the company uses to contextualize and apply analytics to ongoing projects or problems. Or, there might be a widget acting as a window into an internal blogging platform or wiki through which people could drop "quick posts," starting the analytical process through dialog via comments and relevant posts.

So, pull, filter, push. Maybe it's just the lightweight business intelligence we've been waiting for.