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Google is quietly adding new features to Google Gadgets. The company recently [announced][1] a new developer feature called PubSub which allow Gadgets to share information between them. PubSub is a beta release and so far there aren't many gadgets using it (just Google's example actually).
Part of the appeal of widgets (or Gadgets as Google insists on calling them) is that they're small applications which encapsulate and present small chunks of data. But sometimes data models don't lend themselves to a single widget. A Search widget, for instance, would be a good place for a single data stream to be broken into multiple widgets, say, a search box and then a widget with video results, one with photos, etc.
Google claims the new PubSub feature will allow developers to "split up various pieces of information amongst multiple gadgets and allow them to communicate with each other to paint a bigger picture."
The release is a beta and if you play around with Google's sample gadget you'll notice some bugs, there's a full list available [here][1] and the developer documentation can be found [here][2]. For the time being Pubsub only works with gadgets in iGoogle and lacks support for Safari though they should work in Firefox or IE.
To be honest I'm not sure I see this contributing much to the growth of Google gadgets, but perhaps I'm wrong. If you have ideas about possible use cases for this feel free to drop them in the comments.
[via [Google Operating System][3]]
[1]: http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Gadgets-API/browse_thread/thread/accca944f8347630/a8688b6a52a141f2
[2]: http://www.google.com/apis/gadgets/pubsub.html
[3]: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/08/google-gadgets-that-talk-with-each.html
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