Web, yes; browser, no?!

Google seems to be telling Net users that they don't really need a browser, or maybe that PCs are getting more like Macs. It's launching "Sidebar" - software that pulls news stories, photographs, weather updates, stock quotes, and other features onto a user's computer without opening a Web browser," the Los Angeles Times reports. Sidebar points to a trend. Its features and the way they work - "trying to shorten the connection between consumers and the content that interests them, as the Times put it - are a bit like the "widgets" in the "Konfabulator platform" that Yahoo just acquired and "Spotlight" and "Dashboard" in Apple's Tiger OS X operating system. At least students can have more fun taking notes on their laptops, typing on digital "stickies." Let's just hope that, in Google and Yahoo's version, advertising won't appear on those stickies. Here's the BBC on Sidebar.