...
This brings me to a question I have asked a couple of times before, never got an answer. Is the widget supposed to update itself, or does one need to reboot to get the updated data? (I did log off last night and just checked - the widget is now updated.)
The widget is supposed to update itself. The OS X Dashboard widget can be forced to update by typing Command-R while it's selected (it has a cute swirly animation, too). The Yahoo widget can be made to update by closing it (right-click on the widget and choose Close Widget), and then restarting it (left-click on the Widget dock Gear icon, and select Open Widget...). A reboot shouldn't be necessary.
I don't know why IceTV have chosen to make it easy to force an update in the Dashboard widget and a pain to force an update in the Yahoo widget. And yes, key-presses
can be acted on in a Yahoo widget.