The new system is called Yahoo! Widgets and is essentially a javasript engine that allows the user to run small apps. What's different and cool about this is the sheer number of widgets (small applications which do a wide range of things).
Widgets are more usually placed on a user's desktop so they're constantly in view. Some of the more popular widgets include jazzy looking clocks and calendars, news and stock tickers, panels that show system resources and much much more.
There are also RSS feed readers that hover, weather displays that update at a set frequency, email checkers, panels that display your contacts or your Outlook front page, panels to show the Wi-FI strength, currency converters etc. Thousands of widgets created by users are available for free. It's entirely up to you - the end user to customize the desktop that you always wanted.
The Yahoo! Widgets system is supposedly better than the other systems like ObjectDock because they interface with the graphics sub-system in a much better way leading to better looking eye-candy.
The system is available for both Windows and Macintosh systems. Be warned though, that jazzing up one's desktop with Yahoo!Widgets will lead to a hit in your overall computing performance because each widget is run like an application. The more widgets you have, the more system resources are used. Best to find the correct balance between the eye-candy and the system resources at your disposal.
Yahoo specified system requirements:
* Windows XP with Service Pack 1 installed or Windows 2000 with Service Pack 3 installed, or newer, or Mac OS X 10.3 or newer.
* A connection to the Internet.
* 512 megabytes of RAM is recommended.
* Lots of spare time.
