A Vodafone R&D Group (Betavine) launched a Widget Competition. The interesting think about this competition is that is launched by a global telecommunication operator and not by a mobile phone manufacture insuring a larger reach for the technology they are using (at this time it works in several Nokia phones and also in a Samsung model). Also a developer just needs to know client side languages like Javascript to build widgets.
See here how to create a widget (from thinkvitamin).
The recent agreement between Yahoo and Samsung is very interesting for us tech guys. Will we be able to create new applications (and make money) for TV? Will this extend the reach of YouTube and create more market for others in the same market (like Joost, etc.) and even for other companies (like Microsoft, Facebook, etc.)?
The answer for me for both questions is yes, although I think that this will take time to accomplish because we have many TV brands (with different hardware and software) and widget platforms (from Yahoo, Google, Facebook, etc.) and they also need to come on board and make agreements between them.
But if we start to see many different APIs (one for each TV/widget platform) we will be faced with a problem because the effort to build óur killer application will significantly increase. A OpenSocial like effort would speed up things to the benefit of us all.