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Widget Watch: BitSticks
VanillaSoap Design, the folks behind the slick Capture Dashboard widget, have released a public beta of BitSticks, their newest widget. BitSticks is a stand alone Bittorrent widget, and it works just as you would expect. Grab a torrent file in the Finder, invoke Dashboard and drop the file onto BitSticks. Next, sit back and relax as your download progresses. It's not a full-featured client, of course, but it gets the job done with those smaller files you simply need to grab.
Bye Bye Dashboard 1.0
For those who are less than bedazzled with Dashboard, or perhaps you might just want to temporarily shut it off for some heavy lifting your Mac to get done, Bye Bye Dashboard is another one-trick pony that can shut off the flagship Tiger feature.Being that I like Dashboard, I haven't bothered to try this out, but it is free, so what's to lose?
Widget Watch: Locker
Today's widget is quite simple. Locker is a Dashboard widget that performs a single trick: Double click it, and you're sent to a login window via fast user switching. Enter your password and return to what you were doing, with all your applications still running. Since it takes (slightly) less time than Option-selecting "Log out" I'll keep it, as I walk away from my office frequently during the day.
Irish gamers go green for 360
It wouldn't be St. Patrick's Day without a post on the Irish gaming community. The Emerald Isle Xbox site CelticSnipers.com is working on a redesign that mimics the Xbox 360 dashboard. It's still a work in progress pending an April 9 launch, but clan members report that the it will eventually update automatically via Xbox.com and have a bunch of useful features. The Irishmen's effort will get a nod in the next issue of Official Xbox Magazine. Check it out or shine me buckles of gold.[Thanks, Robbie]
Widget Watch: Ta-da Lists widget
We TUAW bloggers certainly love Backpack, the super-simple online PIM from 37 Signals, and it's Dashboard widget is pretty slick too. Naturally, I was excited to see a Dashboard widget pop up in endo this morning for Ta-da List, 37 Signals' one-trick-pony todo list manager. The Ta-da Lists Widget allows you to create new todo lists lists and add items to those lists. It's a pretty straight forward widget for a very straight forward service.One catch I ran into while setting the widget up, however, is the way the widget first logs into your account. I flipped the widget over, entered my name and password and then the widget asked me to log into Ta-da Lists first through my browser, specifying that I check the "remember me" box. I use Camino, and for some odd reason the widget couldn't catch that I logged into the service, so it wouldn't allow me to start using my lists. Only when I logged in through Safari did the widget kick into gear and download my information.Aside from the registration hiccup, this widget is really handy. It's fast, slick, and in true 37 Signals form: simple and effective.
Widget Watch: The Daily Grind
If you have one of those jobs that requires to you track just how much time you spend on a given task (or if you're just a compulsive nut), check out The Daily Grind. It's a Dashboard widget that lets you start several individual timers, and give a custom name to each one. Plus, you can copy the results of any timer to the clipboard with a click. Pretty cool.
Widget Watch: Blogger
David already mentioned this widget in his round-up post of the new Google widgets, but I thought it deserved its own post in case you missed it.Today's widget is a Dashboard widget that allows you to post to your Blogger blog. It's pretty straightforward-enter your username and password and select your blog from the drop down menu (if you maintain more than one blog, that is). Enter a title, create your post and either publish it or save it as a draft.
Google serves up Dashboard widgets
Marshall Kirkpatrick over at The Social Software Weblog (a sister Weblogs, Inc. blog) noticed that Google has produced some Dashboard widgets just for us Mac folks. The first is a Blogger widget, allowing (you guessed it) quick and easy posting to Blogger. It even accepts standard shortcuts for bolding and italicizing text - awesome. Next up is a Gmail widget, offering "your Gmail inbox at a glance." A neat trick up this widget's sleeve (once you enable the widget's advanced options) is that you can filter messages by a specific label. Last but not least is a Search History widget, which seems to be a small step up from the Google search widget already included with Tiger in that it actually saves the terms you use to search. "Remember the page from last week? Now you will," is the tag line.Check out Google's new widgets and head over to the post over at The Social Software Weblog for a different perspective on these widgets and how useful they might (or might not) be.
Learn to love Apple's Calendar widget
When Apple first released Mac OS 10.4.4 with its brand new Dashboard widgets back in January, more than a few of you gave the updated calendar widget a big thumbs down. I don't mind it, but it seems I'm in the minority. This post is for you nay-sayers.Macworld is describing some great tips for quickly navigating the calendar widget. You can use your right and left arrow keys to jump from month to month, and the up and down arrows to move from year to year. To quickly return to the current month, just hit the home key (or fn plus left arrow on a laptop). Now don't you love calendar just a little bit more?
Widget Watch: Tetris Widget Round Up
When digging around on the net this week, I found more than one solution to TUAW reader/commenter Aaron Garn's need for Tetris in the Dashboard. First up is MiniTetris by Shock Widgets, a slightly laggy, really miniature tetris. Secondly I found LIFEwaves' fig-leaf-decorated over-priced, and apparently discontinued version. Lastly, I bring your attention to pakkman781's free and flash-based tetris (on which I couldn't make the audio stop: Must ... mute... sound!)I must say that neither of this options was as pleasant to me as playing gtetrinet (no, not by myself, sheesh!). Also, listen up, would-be future Tetris-on-a-mac creators, TUAW reader/commenter Chris wants Tetris to work with Mac laptops with built-in motion detectors. So get on that, mmkay?
Widget Watch: WeatherBug
Here's a great weather Dashboard widget that makes Apple's Weather look downright anemic. WeatherBug Local Weather by WeatherBug displays your local weather, live radar shots, current news and even alerts and warnings for your area.Click the "Animate" button at the bottom of the screen and you're brought to a web page with the radar animation. It would be cool if this worked within the widget, but it's hardly a deal breaker. Check it out.
Opera to include its own widgets
Forget podcast overload, I'm suffering from widget overload. There are Konfabulator widgets (now called Yahoo! Widgets Engine) and Apple Dashboard widgets. Microsoft will included "gadgets" with Vista, KDE will soon support Dashboard widgets and a soon-to-be-released version of the Opera web browser will feature its own built-in widgets. Phew.The next preview version of Opera to be released (scheduled for some time this week) will include tools that will allow users to view information drawn from certain websites, like sports scores or weather reports, without having to continually revisit those sites. A dozen "demo widgets" will be included. Integrated BitTorrent search and download will also be a part of the Opera preview release.The idea of widgets written and launched directly from a browser is kind of interesting. I'll have to check this out.[Via MacSlash]Update: It's available now.Thanks, James!
Pong clocks; real vs. widget
We missed the news that the swoon-inducing "Pong clock" is actually for sale! At $240, it's a bit more expensive than an Atari Flashback, but oh so worth it!If you just want the Pong time-keeping functionality, but don't care about the aesthetics, you can download the free "pongClock" widget for Apple's Dashboard. The widget uses the score to keep time for you and you have the option to play a match against it. Oh, Pong, where will you be next?
Widget Watch: ColorBurn
Here's a helpful widget for all you web design/creative professionals who are looking for a little inspiration. ColorBurn by firewheel design is a Dashboard widget that suggests one color palette per day, consisting of four colors and their corresponding hexadecimal values. You can change the widget's background from black to white, and view the previous seven days' palettes. Here's hoping you find it inspirational (or at the least, nice to look at).[Via What Do I Know]
Widget Watch: Carpenter's level
Now this is a cool widget. The Carpenter's Level is a Dashboard widget that responds to your (so equipped) iBook or Powerbook's built-in motion detector. Tilt your laptop to the left or right and watch the bubble move. This widget has been written to go to "sleep" when Dashboard is inactive, so don't worry about it continually monitoring your laptop's position in space. I don't have an iBook or Powerbook that I could try this with, so if you do, please post your experience in the comments. If you're a carpenter who actually gives this a try on the job site, we definitely want to hear from you.[Via Daring Fireball]
Widget Watch: The 2006 Australian Open
Today's widget is a Dashboard widget by Anson Parker. The 2006 Australian Open widget lets your browse scheduled matches, resulting scores and even view pictures of the competitors. Moving between matches, players and dates is easy. It's kind of large with the photos displayed, but there's an option to hide them. If you're a tennis fan, check this one out.
Disable and stop the Dashboard
Here is a great video podcast [link] that demonstrates several ways to either stop or disable the Dashboard. The author demonstrates both getting the job done via the Terminal as well as with a couple of double-clickable utilities he has written. It's a well done screencast and quite informative. Check it out.
Intel Macs and Dashboard
Apple has posted a technical Q&A designed to put Widget developer's fears about their widgets not working on Intel Macs to rest. Most widgets should work without a line of code needing to be rewritten, the only widgets that will encounter problems are those that use plugsin. Plugin based widgets will nee to wait for a Universal version of that plugin to be produced before it will work on the new Intel Macs.
New widgets in Mac OS 10.4.4
Have you grabbed Mac OS 10.4.4 from software update yet? Then launch the Dashboard and check out your spiffy new widgets. I've found a few that are definitely new, and some that I don't think I recognize, but I've got a lot installed, so who knows.First of all, Apple's calendar widget has received a facelift. The new calendar features white text on a black background and a horizontal orientation. There are now two phone book widgets, one for "people" and one for "businesses." Appropriately enough, the business widget is yellow and the people grey. There's a Google widget I'm pretty sure I haven't seen before, as well as a quite nice one from ESPN. Have I missed any? Let us know.
Widget Watch: Frylock
Today's widget is only 90% useless. Frylock is a Konfabulator Yahoo! Widgets Engine widget that floats your favorite box of animated French fries around your desktop in that unique, Frylock fashion. You can even configure it to launch the application of your choice when double-clicked. See? It's mildly amusing and kind of useful. I'd like it even better if it included some audio clips, but beggars can't be choosers. Round out your collection of animation-based widgets with this Futurama collection as well as these from Family Guy.
