widget watch
Latest
Widget Watch: English to Pirate Translator
Have you ever wanted to give a scurvy dog a piece of your mind, but you just couldn't find the right phrase? Those days are long gone, thanks to the English to Pirate Translator widget.With one press of a button you'll be spouting pirate just like Bluebeard.
Widget Watch: PEMDAS
Whilst I was attending school my teachers assured me that I would use the math I was learning in my day to day life. They lied. I can't remember the last time someone asked me to get the volume of a pyramid, or what the cosine of 12.3234 was.Since I am but a mere blogger PEMDAS isn't all that useful to me, but if you find yourself wishing for a more competent calculator for OS X you should check it out. It is a scientific calculator that supports formulas, has a nice design, and has a low, low price (free).[via one digital life]
Widget Watch: Are you ready for some football?
Oh, yes I am. If you like a little NFL mixed in with you OS X, check out 2006 NFL by Kelly Phillips. It's a Dashboard widget that breaks down every game of the 2006 NFL season. Flip it over, and get each team's win/loss record, sorted by conference and division.If you just want to focus on a single team, Kelly has got you covered. There is a Dashboard widget available for every individual NFL team as well. Check them out if football is your thing. Finally, let me add...Go, Pats!
Widget Watch: Mr. Alligator
Who says that widgets need to be useful? Certainly not Curious Media, the creators of Mr. Alligator. Mr. Alligator sits in your Dashboard and waits to be clicked on. When someone clicks on him a random sentence, pulled from words in a database, is displayed. Mr. Alligator can also speak the phrases using any of OS X's built in voices, but I find them annoying.You can also add words to the database, and if Mr. Alligator says something truly profound you can copy it to the clipboard without leaving the widget.Pointless? Yes. Fun? Yes.
Widget Watch: Dashalytics
I run a number of personal blogs, and like all bloggers I am obsessed with statistics (who doesn't want to know how unpopular their thoughts about their cats are?). Google Analytics is a great, free service from Google that gathers a number of stats from any website onto which you add Google's magic code.Why am I blathering on about Google Analytics on TUAW? Because Dashalytics is a cool widget that puts your Google Analytics stats right in the Dashboard (to make the obsession even easier). You can even use multiple instances of Dashalytics to multiple websites.Thanks, Mark.
Widget Watch: Get Picture Framer for free
Monkey Business Labs and Photojojo are offering Picture Framer Deluxe, which usually costs $5, for free. Why are they doing this? Free publicity, I imagine.If you are looking for a Dashboard widget that can cycle through your iPhoto library, or your Flickr stream then you can't do better than this deal. This deal is valid until noon tomorrow.
Widget Watch: MultiDash - workspaces for Dashboard
Looks like even Dashboard is getting in on this 'spaces' concept with MultiDash - a workspace manager for your Mac OS X 10.4 widgets. Flipping the widget over allows you to create separate workspaces, and it simply records which widgets are open, complete with a screenshot, when you create the workspace. Flipping the widget back over allows you to click the title bar to chose which workspace you want to see and potentially switch to. Clicking the button on the bottom... well, that's pretty self explanatory.After tinkering around with this widget, I have to say: this is fantastic. Setting aside the debate about widgets and system resources, this is a killer way to manage sets of widgets for different Dashboard uses, rather than compromising with keeping all your widgets open or dealing with the less-than-ideal widget strip in the Dashboard to re-open widgets as you need them.MultiDash is available from JBearTechnologies as donationware, and I highly recommend dropping them at least a buck (pound, etc.) or two for their slick work.
Widget Watch: Leopard server monitor
Steve didn't make any note of Leopard server in his Keynote, which is a little sad. I can imagine all the engineers who work on the server OS waiting, hoping that Steve would note all the cool new features. Sadly, they were out of luck but unlike Steve I will mention one of the new features, namely this cool widget (which is mentioned at the end of this video). That's right you can (well, will be able to) monitor all sorts of neat stuff about your Leopard server right in the Dashboard. You can monitor things like how many people are connected to the iChat server, or the processor usage in the past hour. This gives sysadmins a nice thumbnail view into the health of their servers.Kudos to the Leopard server team!
Widget Watch: iStat Pro 3.0
iStat Pro 3.0 has been released and it is one of the only widgets that I actually find useful. It displays all sorts of information about your Mac at a glance, and in version 3.0 it is even easier to read. 4 new skins and new anti-aliased graphs for cpu and memory really make this widget a cut above the rest.iStat Pro 3.0 is free, but if you enjoy it be sure to get the developer some cash. Good widgets don't grow on trees.Thanks to everyone who sent this in.
Widget Watch: BBC Motion Gallery Search
The BBC (or the Beeb to those in the know) has just released a very cool Dashboard Widget. What's it do? I'm glad you asked! The BBC Motion Gallery Search is basically a quick and easy way to search the BBC's Motion Gallery, which is a website that has lots of very cool video clips on it.Pretty slick.
Widget Watch: cloud.lic.io.us
As you may have guessed, today's widget interacts with del.icio.us. Cloud.lic.io.us is a Dashboard widget that has a single purpose in life: To put all of your tags in your Dashboard. The developer is currently looking for people to "...put my widget through the wringer," so try it out and let him know how it goes.[Via The Apple Blog]
Widget Watch: Digg Search Widget
Digg is everyone's favorite social news site (with a decided focus on all things tech). With all the things that get 'dugg' it is hard to keep up, and that's where the Digg Search Widget (for Yahoo! Widget Engine) comes in. The widget can search a number of different Digg categories and can display up to 15 items from any Digg RSS feed. That's not all that this little widget can do, so go check it out.Thanks, James.
Widget Watch: The Daily Grind 2.0
Dave Caolo found The Daily Grind last month, just this week it was updated to version 2. The new version of this task-tracking widget adds colored labels and the ability to drag and drop tasks for greater organizing goodness or "simply because it's an addictive pastime."The Daily Grind v2 is donationware and available from Thomas Pilgaard Miller's site.
Widget Watch: Hard at work
Today's widget makes slacking off at work so much easier (not that we condone that type of thing). When running in the Dashboard, the Hard at Work widget looks like a full sized, Excel-style spreadsheet, complete with fictitious data. Flip it over, and it's a large word processing document, full of important-looking text. Now you can goof off all day long, knowing that safety is only a flick of the F12 key away.
Widget Watch: xCuts - a Mac OS X shortcut reference
Now here is a widget that everyone can enjoy: more better keyboard shortcuts. xCuts is a reference widget for Mac OS X's keyboard shortcuts, organized by Category, Scope and Object, allowing you more control over which kinds of shortcuts to browse through. You can even live-search the database, and the widget allows you to copy and paste the shortcut text into documents. Nice.
Widget Watch: iStat pro
Here's a widget that nearly any geek would love. iStat pro is a Dashboard widget that keeps tabs on your system, reporting on CPU activity, memory, network status and information, temperature, fan activity, available disk space (on all connected drives) and more. Plus, it looks great while doing it. The interface is customizable and very easy to read. Definitely worth checking out.[Via Resexcellence]
Widget Watch: HBO Widget
I haven't been this impressed with a widget's capabilities in a long time. The HBO widget is highly functional and eye candy-infused, allowing you not only to check the program guides for both HBO and Cinemax channels, but you can browse and view their 'large collection' of teasers right inside the widget. Top that all off with a really slick minimizing ability to get all this intensive content out of your way when you'd rather save the cycles, and I think I've found the latest widget to receive a 'click of my mouse™.'The widget is, of course, free and available from HBO's site.[via Daring Fireball]
Widget Watch: Macgyverisms
I have found a use for Dashboard and its name is Macgyverisms. This pointless widget provides you with one of 200 ideas from MacGyver himself to get out of a sticky situation. The next time I am in the woods with only a rosary and a slingshot, I'll know what to do. Will you?[via Lifehacker]
Widget Watch: Retrograde3
I know what you're going to say already. "The last thing we need is another clock widget!" While I'm inclined to agree, I will say this: Retrograde3 is one cool clock.It's a Yahoo! Widgets Engine widget that displays the time, date and phase of the moon. You can change the clock's color as well as the "reflection" on its face. One word of warning, however: It's BIG (bigger even than the image at right). Those of you with 12" displays have been warned.
Widget Watch: Magnolia Blossom
Magnolia Blossom allows you to watch as people add links to the social bookmarking site, Ma.gnolia. The widget presents the links as snapshots of the website that scroll across the widget in a visually pleasing manner. If you are obsessed about finding cool new websites (there are websites other than TUAW out there?) then this widget might be just what the doctor ordered.[via Infinite Loop]
