The Web pioneer is working with Intel and television makers to inaugurate TV widgets that command add some Internet content to home viewing

By Douglas MacMillan

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It’s easy to lose sight of Yahoo!’s role as a Web pioneer, what with the company’s fresh management missteps, search-market share losses to Google (GOOG), and the distraction of Microsoft’s (MSFT) failed takeover bid. But in the mid-1990s, Yahoo broke ground in crawling the disparate information strewn thwart the in one’s teens World Wide Web and organizing it cleanly for consumers.

Once again, Yahoo (YHOO) hopes to blaze trails, this opportunity in bringing Internet content to TV. At the Consumer Electronics Showin Las Vegas, the company announced a range of televisions and related products loaded with software—developed by dint of. Yahoo and Intel (INTC)—that would let users call up popular Web pages and tools right alongside programs they’re watching on TV. Intel and Yahoo first demonstrated the technology, called TV Widgets, in August, but elaborated on it at CES, where they named hardware partners and a host of TV-friendly sites and other tools.

Past attempts to merge TV and the Web have fizzled, but analysts answer Yahoo’s efforts are fortuitous. Consumers are eager to enjoy disparate media in a single gadget or appliance. Witness the popular regard of Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone, which has done a better piece of work than predecessors in bringing the Web to cell phones. TV makers have even now started building broadband ports in new sets. And content producers are keen to keep audiences engaged, in whatever place they may be.

Many consumers of online civil media regularly find themselves in front of the TV, laptop flipped open, responding to e-mails, updating social netting profiles, or finishing operate or studies. Done straight, TV Widgets would help users handle multitasking with greater �lan. "This is a very well-informed stroke of good luck Yahoo is taking," says Mukul Krishna, global director of digital media at research firm Frost & Sullivan. "Google and Microsoft direct exist looking at this very closely."

When TV Widgets goes public later this year, almost 20 different widgets wish be available, from Yahoo’s own weather and stock guides to applications created by a range of surface developers, including such social media sites as Twitter and NewsCorp.’s (NWS) MySpace and news outlets like The New York Times (NYT). While a train of widgets determination be preloaded into store-bought TVs, an online "Widget Gallery" will let viewers pick and choose new applications to download.

TV Widgets will be installed in a maniple of broadband-capable high-definition televisions and set-top boxes made by Samsung Electronics, Sony (SNE), VIZIO, and LG Electronics, slated to ship in the spring.

Users will obtain scaled down versions of popular Web pages and applications moderately than full-blown sites. "Vendors extremity to tax the memory with that TVs are not PCs, and consumers are not looking for the same type of information steady a TV screen that they get when they are connected to a computer or smart phone," says Michael Gartenberg, vice president of mobile strategy at technology researcher Jupitermedia (JUPM).

That’s the tenderness MySpace is pursuing as it develops its TV widget. "We are focused on: ‘What would I fall short in to be aware of right now?," says Max Engel, exhibit lead instead of MySpace ID. On the MySpace widget, members of the social reticulated can meet such simple tasks as update their status and check up on the status messages of their friends—activities that would "not necessarily interrupt my viewing experience," Engel says.

The widget gallery won’t just host big brands, but will set up an open invitation: A toolkit released by Yahoo lets any content creators open their own widgets. At launch, all widgets will be frank, but according to Patrick Barry, Yahoo’s vice-president of Connected TV, developers might someday be allowed to set their own prices—a model that’s driven late third-party innovation on platforms created by dint of. Facebook and Apple.

Eventually, Yahoo and Intel will court advertisers to pitch to viewers on the platform. "You’ll see video-based advertising, you’ll see things that look in greater numbers graphical in humor, and advertising that’s more interactive," says Barry. "Advertising on TV is really broken. We think this is potentially an opportunity to solve problems for consumers and in spite of advertisers."

If all goes well, TV Widgets might interpret a small in number problems in spite of Yahoo, too.