I've been writing about--and fascinated by--microformats, APIs, structured data and widgets for about 3 years. so sometimes the amazement and mystification of other folks working online around the concept of widgets just baffles me. (See my/a June 2006 post on widgets here.)

To make a widget, you need a good API, and an easy build procees (a tool) that allows you to build a widget, applet or some other kind 0of microformat that is interactive and that provides a means for you to quickly embed and syndicate data and services to URLs not your own.

That's it, period.

So why the amazement? (And why wouldn't any business owner and/or developer in their right mind want to go down this road: APIs, microformats, build tools--nothing risky any any of 'em.