Five uses for Panic's Status Board

Panic's new iPad app Status Board is great for keeping track of your email, tweets and the weather. We liked it a lot. Status Board comes ready to use, but its highly customizable nature is proving to be one of the app's greatest strengths.

Here are five unexpected ways people are using Status Board.

• Showing Google Analytics: This one is admittedly complicated, but as time goes by, this process is sure to be simplified. Regardless, having your Google Analytics freely available for viewing on your Status Board is a nice addition for site owners.

• Showing Server Statistics: With a bit of code, Status Board can display the current load stats and available disk space of your servers.

• Showing BART Arrival Times: Sure, this is geographically too specific to be of use to our readers outside the Bay Area. But give it time and your local public mass transit solution will be displayable on your Status Board too.

• Showing Your Things Tasks: One intrepid user has developed a way to connect the task-management app Things with their Status Board to display which project due dates are coming up.

• Display your home temperature: If you have a Nest, the internet-connected thermostat from the iPod's design godfather, your house's current temperature can be displayed on your Status Board. At the moment you can only monitor the status of your house temperature; however Nest's own software allows you to monitor and change the temperature of your house remotely. Having these features available right there on your Status Board would be very convenient. Until that day comes, it's nice to know the temperature without having to get up.