There's not a lot of news this week, but the news there is, is pretty big.

Yahoo acquires Konfabulator, a nice tool that lets you put widgets on your screen. It's also now free, instead of the $20 it used to cost. I'm not sure where Konfabulator will go, but how soon until we see a "My Yahoo" widget?
 
Not only did Yahoo get in the Widget business, it appears they are building a Technorati killer - a blog search engine. Why wouldn't they be? Everyone else is.

Speaking of Technorati, they've released a mobile edition. For those who can't get enough "ego searches" and need to get a fix on the road!

Google's customizable homepage now supports RSS. It’s pretty weak - it's definitely not an aggregator - it only shows headlines. But I suppose it's a step in the right direction. Now, if just I could get RSS feeds in my Gmail account.

Sticking with Google for a moment, it appears that back in 2003, Google applied for a patent of ads in RSS feeds. It'll be interesting to see what comes of this. Feedster offers feed ads, as well as a few other companies. If Google gets this patent (or has it - not sure), will they attempt to enforce it?
 
I'd be remiss if I didn't miss the two biggest news items of the week: betas of both Windows Vista and Internet Explorer 7 were released into the wild. Well, not the "real wild" but to MSDN subscribers. Remember last week when I asked if the July beta would be for MSDN subscribers and the (reported) August 3rd would be public? Could I have been correct on that speculation? I guess we'll find out this week. Either way, everyone seems to be talking about these betas. There's even talk about what the IE beta 2 will include - shouldn't some of that be based on what comes from beta 1?

More Vista news. On the same week that it's released in beta form, there's rumors that the release date (reported last week as June 2006) has slipped to Q4 of 2006 - sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Somehow, I think the Xbox sales will outpace Vista if that happens.
 
Lastly, AOL has released their own aggregator. Now, we just wait on Google's. I haven't looked at AOL's, mainly because I think it's going to be too simplistic - like everything else AOL does, it's got to appeal to the masses. While that's great for my grandma, it's not what I'm after. And that's fine - I don't think I'm AOL's target market anyway.