Last December, Newsweek.com predicted that  if 2006 was all about social networks, user-generated content, and YouTube 2007 will be the Year of the Widget.

A widget engine is a host software system for physically inspired applets on the desktop. Two commonly known types of widgets are the Yahoo! Widgets and the Dashboard widgets of Apple Macintosh computer users. Microsoft refers to them as gadgets, both in Windows Vista and the Windows Live system..

Widgets are downloadable interactive virtual tools that provide services that show the user the latest news, the current weather, a dictionary, a map program, sticky notes, or even a language translator, among other things..

These mini-applications are can be dragged onto a desktop or pasted into a personal page, where they are constantly updated with information. Think of it as tech jewelrybling for your blog; ice for your desktop, writes Newsweek.com’s Brian Braker..

This year alone, widgets will be featured in the two major operating systems. Vista, Microsoft Windows new operating system, will come with 11 gadgets out of the box and also offer users the ability to build more and upload them to Windows Live. Apple, on the other hand, is set to launch Leopard, the newest version of its Mac OS X, which will let users build widgets from scratch and share them with others, even if they’ve never written a line of code..

Even content providers like The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and ESPN have also started allowing users to design the page they see when they log on. Flickr.com lets its members create a badge that they can post on their blogs and personal home pages to let friends know when they’ve uploaded new snapshots. Fox Interactive Media (which includes MySpace, RottenTomatoes.com and AskMen.com) has already launched its own platform, called SpringWidgets.

This is good news for advertisers. Widgets offer a range of digital marketing techniques, including online PR, strategic viral marketing, brand advertising, direct response sales, and lead generation through affiliate marketing..

Sanaz Ahari, Microsoft’s Lead Program Manager, believes widgets will introduce a new form of marketing in the near future. I can see a whole new level of advertising through gadgets, she states in a FastCompany.com interview. An early example was when Google had that Da Vinci Code gadget a replica of the ‘cryptex,’ the cylindrical decoder device from the book and movie. You could take the puzzle and put it on your Web page for your friends to discover. That was great. Create something cool, and people will distribute your brand for you. And content will become the new forum for advertising.