This story was reported by Dan Farber last night on Webware.

“Netvibes, a developer of customizable start pages, plans to make its widget platform, application programming interfaces, and iPhone version open source,” according to CEO Tariq Krim.

Farber’s full story can be read here.

This morning chip giant Intel publicly rolled out Mash Maker, a browser plugin that allows users to easily customize any Web page by clicking and inserting widgets onto the page.

The question is why would Intel enter this arena, when similar mash tools, like Yahoo! Pipes and Microsoft Popfly, have been out for a while?

Eariler this month, Intel VP of Research Andrew A. Chien presented a paper entitled, “Live Large; Everyday Sensing and Perception,” which described Intel’s “Carry Small, Live Large” research initiative.

This initiative focuses on Intel’s development of Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) that “will be more aware of their users and context in everyday activities and environments, with sensors and inference,” according to Chien.

At this presentation, Chien highlighted “a mobile-sensing platform, designed to act as a fitness device with a multitude of data-reporting,” which, he said, “fell under the banner of human activity recognition.” (See this article.)

So where does Mash Maker fit into all of this?

Mash Maker may be providing Intel with early data on human activity and environments. We note that Mash Maker cannot run without logging in the first time. It remembers your login after that. So, is Intel collecting our activity data, hoping to use it in its MID development?

The connection may be plausible, since during his MID presentation Chien referenced what became today’s release of Mash Maker.

A notable step towards widget standardization took place
this morning.

W3C, the World Wide Web Consortium, today released four working drafts of standards for widgets. The Consortium, directed by Web pioneer Tim Berners-Lee, has already published more than 100 recommendations for Web technology standards.

The Consortium describes the four new documents as:

• The Widget Landscape (Q1 2008): reviews commonalities and fragmentation across widget user agents and explores how fragmentation currently affects, amongst other things, authoring, security, distribution and deployment, internationalization and the device-independence of widgets.

• Packaging and Configuration: defines a Zip-based packaging format and an XML-based configuration document format for widgets.

• Digital Signature: defines a profile of the XML-Signature Syntax and Processing specification to allow a widget resource to be digitally signed.

• Requirements: lists the design goals and requirements that specification would need to address in order to standardize various aspects of widgets

“This document (the Widget Landscape) surveys a group of market-leading widget user agents with the aim to inform the requirements of the [Widgets 1.0: Requirements] document. The survey exposes commonalities and fragmentation across widget user agents, and discusses how fragmentation currently affects, amongst other things, authoring, security, distribution and deployment, internationalisation and the device-independence of widgets,” according to the authors.

Ongoing comments and exchanges on the documents can be followed here on Twitter.

Using a MySpace widget, followers of the American “Idol Gives Back” fundraiser can continue donating to the drive, as well as enter a sweepstakes featuring a trip for 2 to the show’s finale and post-show party.

Although the show aired last night, the widget prolongs the ability to donate, and, as of this writing, has accounted for more than $40,000 USD in donations from MySpace members.

MySpace partnered with American Idol to encourage its members to donate and to share the widget with friends. The widget can process donations, and tracks real-time donations by MySpace members.

.

.

.

.

.

.

MuseStorm is set to announce on Tuesday two major enhancements to its widget creation and syndication platform: the first-ever support for creating native Bebo applications, and instant, cross-platform widget updating capabilities.

The enhanced platform will allow users — without having to rely on developers — to produce full-fledged, native Bebo applications.

In addition, the new platform has the ability to update widgets simultaneously. Users can make changes to any given widget and those changes will be ported across all platforms – Facebook, Bebo, Web, desktop or standalone applications.

These enhancements are rolled into the newly named “MuseStorm Engagement Platform” (MEP), which is built on the company’s existing end-to-end solution for widget creation and syndication. The platform includes a production studio (shown below) that allows non-technical users to create widgets, and analytics that show in-depth widget-interaction statistics.

MuseStorm co-founder Ori Soen says, “By offering customers a means to quickly and easily create Bebo widgets in addition to a wide range of other applications, as well as the ability to make simultaneous updates to widgets running on Web, desktop, Facebook and other applications, MuseStorm minimizes time spent creating widgets, and optimizes their benefits by letting our customers quickly and completely understand how their widgets are performing.”

Founded in 2005, MuseStorm is privately held and has offices in Sunnyvale, Calif. and Tel Aviv, Israel.

At the close of the seven-day auction listing on eBay, the domain name “widgets.com” garnered $175,100 as a final bid, which was not enough to meet the unpublished reserve amount set for the sale.

In the end, 66 bids were placed by 28 bidders. During the last three hours of bidding time, the bids moved up less than $15,000, and any anticipated whirl of bidding activity did not materialize. The auction received a bunch of page views; the counter for the listing reached nearly 2900.

Whether “widgets.com” remains in the possession of its reported seller, Rick Schwartz, the self-named “Domain King,” who registered the domain in 1995 as one of thousands he owns, or behind-the-scenes dealings will mean the change of ownership, remains to be announced.

It is unclear whether the auction was about a businessman looking to seize the moment with a piece of hot Internet real estate as the digital world welcomes the burgeoning potential of widgets, or the efforts of a vocal pioneer domainer determined to call attention to his concerns about certain provisions of proposed legislation that will target and restrict commerce by the domain name industry.

So, for today, “widgets.com” remains a piece of Internet property subject to a higher bid and, we think, certain to make a news splash whenever it debuts in its next form.

Bidding on the “widgets.com” domain name auction on eBay has not been accelerating at the rate we expected. Does this mean something?

As of this moment, the bid price is $155,100 USD, and the auction is scheduled to close tomorrow morning, March 26, at 10:29:44 a.m. PDT.

At this rate, it’s possible that the owner’s reserve price will not be met and the sale will not happen. Then again, we all know that last minute bidding and sniping on eBay might jack the price up incredibly.

Stay tuned … We’ll post the outcome tomorrow morning.

What’s the worth of the domain name “widgets.com”? Well, the owner is putting that to the test.

For more than — likely much, much more than — $120,000 USD, you can be in the running to buy that domain name.

That’s the current bid on eBay for the seven-day auction listing, but surely the price will rise as the bidding for the name continues until the closing on the morning of March 26 PDT.

Why is the current owner selling? It all has to do with serious changes taking place in the domain-name-selling world. Find out more here.

Who’s bidding and who will end up owning the name? We don’t know. Right now the bidding names are being encrypted by eBay.

What will the winner end up doing with the name? That falls in the “wait and see” category.

What price will end up as the winning bid? Keep your eyes on widgetBeat for more. We’ll let you know about the winning bid, assuming that the final bid meets the seller’s unpublished reserve price.

Hollywood Reporter’s Gail Schiller writes this morning that Paramount Pictures will be releasing their second “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” trailer as a widget this week.

The first “Skull” trailer was released in February and, according to Schiller, “racked up millions of views.” Paramount’s first-ever trailer widget was for “Cloverfield,” which benefited at the box office from their widget campaign.

Paramount is also using a series of 8-10 video widgets for the upcoming Mike Myers comedy, “The Love Guru.” Widget producer Clearspring has created all of Paramount’s widgets to-date.

The widgets have been distributed on Facebook, where
the Indiana Jones page presently has more than 19,000 “fans,” who spread the widgets by sharing them with their friends.

The creative folks at WidgetBox have found an inventive way to create traffic for their site: make a widget on their site and you become eligible for winning a MacBook Air.

I don’t know about you, but being a Mac enthusiast myself AND having Air envy, I would go to their site right now and start making widgets. If I wasn’t feeling some conflict of interest, I’d be all over it, but that shouldn’t stop you!

WidgetBox is calling this promotion “Widget Madness” (to coincide with NCAA basketball’s March Madness, perhaps?), and the dates for eligibility are March 18 (that’s today!) through April 11.

Be sure to watch this space for the winner’s announcement.