Sort of. Yes, a widget being 'able' to do this is a good first step. The bigger step being a unified way for all widgets to do this. One that got configured at a central point, so each widget wouldn't be required to configure itself. Granted, some widgets may want to do this. But that just makes each widget more complicated. If there existed something at the OS level for widgets to send data it might help speed adoption. I'd imagine there'd have to be at least two ways for a widget to send data, one as a plain text string and the other as a set of data (possibly XML). This to allow a widget to send rich structures of data should it be necessary. No point in having everyone try to jam data into a text string, right? I've been there before and it's messier than necessary.
Of course that leads to hassles with how to deal with centralized distribution of the messages. Either each widget would have to specify it's destination(s).
What's more work, for each widget to have multiple sending points, or to have the widget ask a central point for what endpoints are available and then track how those are used? As in, my widget asks the server for endpoints. It then presents a UI to the user allowing them use a scrolling list of checkboxes to indicate which endpoints should get a message. Then when it needs to send a message it'd just ask the server to send them using the chumby's ID and a widget ID. It would already know what services that chumby is configured to use and could then deliver the message(s) accordingly. This would, of course, be a fair bit of work on the server side to handle tracking each chumby's ID and it's widget preferences. But isn't that already being done now, sort of? Then it'd be more work to handle interfacing to the various services. Which isn't without potential issues with delivery speed, reliability, privacy and security.
Otherwise it'd be a service arms-race for each widget to know which services exist, to save the login info and to also babysit the message delivery.
Basically I just want to be able to know that when I see something of interest on the chumby's screen that I can 'bump' that info off to somewhere else for follow up. What better way to encourage more interaction with the ambient information being presented? I could see an advertising widget (if and when they ever emerge) being able to make effective use of this.
With an across-the-board interface for doing this it might lend itself to greater uptake by widget developers.
