Desktop widgets have been popular on OS X for a while, and are becoming familiar fixtures of desktops running Windows Vista. Most desktop widgets to date have been written for a native platform. Widgets written in Java, or "desklets," by contrast, can run on any platform for which a Java 6 runtime is available. The term "desklet" was coined by Joshua Marinacci and Robert Cooper, who recently released a preview of their first desklet toolkit, AB5k.

In the AB5k overview, the authors note that:

AB5k is a container for running desklets, our word for widgets. Desklets are little programs that run inside the container and do one thing very well. Some common desklets include clocks, calendars, news reports, weather, searchers (like Wikipedia) and useless but fun little playthings.

The project, currently hosted on Google Code, has scant documentation, but there are several examples available for download, including a Wikipedia search desklet and a world map.

Do you believe that desktop widgets, and desklets in particular, have a role in enterprise applications? If so, what are some of the more interesting ways you can imagine desklets being used in a business setting?