Go go gadget: JBoss Portal adds Google Gadget capability

InfoWorld says the latest version of JBoss Portal allows you to drop in Google Gadgets. I haven’t tried it out yet but I like the concept. The JBoss Portal Portlet Catalog is rather sparse (as is the collection of open source JSR-168 portlets in general as pointed out by Christopher Laprun) so adding to the collection of what’s effectively available out-of-the-box is a Good Thing.

I suppose people using JBoss Portal for consumer facing sites will make the most use of the Google Gadget capability at first. I doubt internal-facing enterprise portals have much use for the Bart Simpson Quote of the Day gadget. From an enterprise perspective, what we’ll probably see is the same thing Laprun points out with regard to JSR-168 portlets–companies will leverage the Google Gadget API to develop their own internal gadgets, but may not be able (or willing) to make them freely available to the community.