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"  There are lots of things I&amp;#039;d rather do than go to a meeting at nine in the morning, but when I was invited to meet with Russ Schafer of Yahoo! Connected TV at Yahoo&amp;#039;s office earlier this month I just couldn&amp;#039;t pass up the chance to play with, ahem, I mean interact and educate myself on the latest internet-connected televisions. According to Nielsen, a leading marketing company, the amount of time people spent watching television and browsing the internet at the same time increased 34.5% from December 2008 to December 2009. Last year, Yahoo collaborated with manufacturers such as LG, Sony, Vizio, Samsung and others to include Yahoo Connected TV with finance, weather, video, and Flickr widgets in their televisions. For those of you aren&amp;#039;t familiar with them, widgets are small programs that act as doorways to larger programs. They show up as icons on the screen and allow you to access larger applications without typing in long web addresses or using a mouse. Widgets from Amazon, Blockbuster, eBay, Twitter, Facebook and many more can be downloaded directly through the television using nothing more than the remote. I had never tried a television widget before but I found many of them easy to use and could see myself utilizing them on a daily basis.   The software in the TV allows family members to create individual profiles containing the widgets they like. To access their profiles, everyone logs in and out and parents can set passwords and other controls to limit children&amp;#039;s usage. When you click on an icon, the widgets don&amp;#039;t obscure the program on the screen but between shows, during commercials, or while channel surfing, widgets are an excellent diversion. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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