Typepad Widgets - A Sign of Things to Come in eLearning Authoring / Developement

As I've talked about several times (eLearning Technology: Authoring in eLearning 2.0 / Add-ins & Mash-ups, eLearning Technology: Promise of Web 2.0 and eLearning 2.0 - Comparison to Macros, IDEs, and Visual Basic) ...

One of the most intriguing aspects of Web 2.0 and eLearning 2.0 is the ability to compose together separate services to create something new and different.

The "Authoring Tool of the Future" and "LMS of the Future" will be along these same lines where you will be able to compose together point solutions.

As a great example of how this is happening, take a look at Typepad's recent announcement:

TypePad Widgets -

A widget is a little piece of content or functionality provided by a third party
that you can place in the siderail of your TypePad blog. Technically, it's just
a snippet of HTML and/or JavaScript that you can manage like any other sidebar
content module on your blog.

There's a good Analysis on TechCrunch.