DashboardWidgets
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First Look: It's About Time brings widgets to the iPad with mini apps
Several years ago at Macworld Expo, I had the pleasure of meeting Saied Ghaffari, CEO of a small company called It's About Time Products, LLC. The company had created a training app which ran on the Mac and provided new iPhone users a chance to learn more about their devices, iTunes, and synchronization with the Mac. This application, called It's About Time: Learn the iPhone 3G, was followed by another training application called It's About Time: Learn the Switch. Learn the Switch was created to help Windows users make the migration to Mac OS X. This app begat Parallels Desktop Switch to Mac Editon ($US99.00), which seamlessly combines the switcher training and a copy of Parallels Desktop. In all cases, the apps use a similar interface, with video of Saied telling you how to get started and then describing how to perform various actions on the iPhone or Mac. Saied is an engaging instructor, providing clear and understandable training to the user from his small window on your Mac. Well, with the iPad looming on the horizon, It's About Time started thinking about what kind of products to produce for the new platform. I talked with Saied Ghaffari yesterday about the new product from It's About Time, called mini apps, and how it will provide iPad users with an answer to one of the three most frequently requested features: multitasking. Read on for more information about mini apps.
Give your Dashboard a kick in the pants
After reading through the comments on my post about Dashboard Widgets, I noticed quite a few people lamented the fact that the widgets have to go through a 'start-up' process every time you turn on your Mac or log out and log back in. Well, not anymore. We actually covered this four years ago, back when it was an application named Dashboard Starter. Today it's called Dashboard Kickstart and its taken the form of a System Preference pane by Alwin Troost that runs in the background and reacts to the starting or re-starting of the Dock. Every time you log in or out, you restart the dock. When that happens, Dashboard Kickstart initiates the starting sequence of the Dashboard Widgets. This prevents the delay you'll experience when launching Dashboard the first time you want to use it. I've used Dashboard Kickstart, in its different iterations, for years and its always worked flawlessly. Once installed, open your System Preferences and simply set how long you want the delay to be between the time your computer starts, or wakes from sleep, and the time you want your widgets 'kicked'. I set the sliders to the lowest time possible. Dashboard Kickstart is free and requires 10.4 or above. Let me know what you think of Dashboard Kickstart in the comments!
Widget Watch: stay on top with Reminder
Gravity Applications recently updated their Reminder widget, and I'm finding it quite useful. Now that my Dashboard isn't taking eons to load -- thanks to Snow Leopard -- it's really nice to be able to pop it up and with a few clicks set an iCal alarm for 5 minutes, an hour, a week, whatever I need a quick beep for that doesn't require a full event edit. It's simple, single-purpose and very effective. You may know Gravity Apps from past coverage on TUAW, or for some of their innovative software projects such as Tags, Searchlight and SofaControl. These guys have been doing a great job providing software tools to meet a wide range of needs, and have proven to be eager and determined developers. The polish they push for on every application apparently shows up in their Dashboard widgets as well.
Create universal games with Unity
Unity is the game development platform for the Mac that really does make the job of building games (and Dashboard widgets) kind of fun. Today, Unity announces the availability of version 1.2.2, which will allow you to make sure that all of your projects are universal binaries. So go out and build the next best thing, and then run it on your Mactel.Unity requires Mac OS X 10.3 or later, and features two pricing options: $250US for the "indie" edition, and $1,000US for the Pro version.Incidentally, we posted our interview with Unity's David Helgason back in October.[Via MacNN]
