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Widget Watch: Battlestar Galactica
Can you feel the anticipation? Season 2 of Battlestar Galactica finally resumes tonight on the SciFi network. You can count down the very seconds until airtime with the Galacticaa Widget (yes, the second "a" is supposed to be there). Also, get images, the name of the upcoming episode, its status as a repeat or a new episode and a brief synopsis of what's next for the members of the fleet.If you're a fan, I suggest you download the frakking thing.
Dashboard silently updated, but bugs still abound
Noticed anything funny with the 360 Dashboard? While it has a couple of problems, it looks like Microsoft have already taken some steps to update the Dashboard, with most people running version 2241 instead of version 1888 which the 360 shipped with. This "silent" updating is a little unnerving, especially as we don't know what was fixed, but it's nice to know something is being done about the various bugs and problems.[Thanks, Scott]
Unity Dashboard widget contest winners announced
Unity recently held a contest that challenged developers to create Dashboard widget games, using their development environment. Today, they have announced the winners, and they're all definitely worth checking out.The widget Open Fire Beta 12 won the People’s Love category. From your perch high atop what looks like a Thomas the Tank Engine train table (what can I say? I have kids), you can blast away at a hapless parade of tanks and jeeps. Hint: If you can't hit them, at least cause a multi-vehicle pile up. The good news is that they can't fire back. It's like shooting fish military vehicles in a barrel.The Grand Prix of the Jury winner was Overwhelmed Arena, a good, old-fashioned shoot-em-up in space. Choose from four ships, fly around the space station and blast bad guys out of the sky. Go into full screen mode and you forget you're using a widget.There are more, of course, and they all deserve your attention. Check them out and have fun.
Retro backgrounds available for Widgets Preference Pane
Back in June I wrote about Widgets Preference Pane, which is a Mac OS X preference pane (as I'm sure you guessed) that gives you great control over Dashboard and your widets. Use it to quickly view all of your installed widgets, deactivate, activate or delete any of them, install new widgets via drag and drop and much more. You can also replace the widget bar's default perforated metal background. Use one of the supplied alternate backgrounds or make your own.If you're like me - not the artistic type - visit Pixeldecor. Owner Jen has made several graphics specifically for replacing the metal backdrop, each with a cool, retro feel. Check it out.
Widget Watch: Capture
Here's a handy Dashboard widget that gives you some nice options for creating screen captures. Capture by VanillaSoap Design allows you to produce a screenshot, with or without the Dashboard visible, as a JPEG, TIFF, PNG, JP2, PICT, BMP, QTIF or PSD file. You can select your save location (including the clipboard), automatically resize your shot and more. Shoot the whole screen or just a selection.VanillaSoap as a few other decent widgets available, like a bittorrent widget called BitSticks and a few games like Snake and Solitaire. Check them out.
Widget Watch: Easy Envelopes
Here's another great widget for you all this morning. Ambrosia software's Easy Envelopes allows you to quickly and easily print envelopes from the Dashboard. Type in your recipient’s address by hand or search your Address Book. Plus, Easy Envelopes adds USPS postal bar codes for both 5 digit and 9 digit zip codes, and can even handle English, Spanish, French, Italian, and Japanese postal system requirements and aesthetics.It's a great example of doing something simple very well. Check it out.
Widget Watch: miniStat 2
Here's a great widget I discovered earlier today. miniStat2 from Shock Widgets reports on system stats like battery life, CPU heat, CPU usage, free storage on mounted drives, memory usage and uptime. That's great, but what I like about miniStat2 is its interface. You can choose from several "skins" to match your machine, including iBook G4, Powerbook G4, both G4 and G5 iMacs, Mac mini and Powermac G5. Plus, you move from one report to the next by clicking on the "dock" in the widget's display. Informative and fun...what more could you want?The website claims that miniStat2 uses only 1% of CPU resources when updating, which it does constantly, and 10M of RAM at average. A single license will cost you $7.45US.
Widget watch: SeeSS
Not long ago we posted a list of the best Dashboard widgets for web developers, as compiled by designer Lisa McMillan. Today's widget could easily join that list. It's called SeeSS, and it serves as a complete CSS reference. There are 140 CSS properties represented, and each includes inheritance, CSS compliancy, Safari support and more. It also does some cool resizing tricks to keep it from hogging too much space on your Dashboard. Check it out.
Widget watch: Sexohol's Enjoy!
Now here's something I haven't seen before. Rock band Sexohol has released its current album Enjoy! as a Dashboard widget. When running in your Dashboard, the Enjoy! widget lets you stream any of the 12 tracks from the album, ready lyrics or browse photos of band members Roger and Golden. You must have an internet connection to listen to the tunes with the free widget, or you can pay $10US for a version that will let you listen to music offline.This isn't Sexohol's first Apple-friendly promotion. Back in March, they sold iPod shuffles preloaded with their Enjoy! album. I've tried the widget out, and it's pretty cool...just don't let the boss see you checking out photos of the pervert fetish band in your office.Thanks, Peter!
Widget watch: Froggster
You may remember last month we featured a Pac Man widget that was quickly (as in that same day) pulled from distribution, as Namco handed a cease and desist order to the widget's developer, Christopher Marks. Well he's tempting fate again, this time with a widget that features a little frog who hops through traffic and across floating logs. Froggster bears a striking resemblance to the classic arcade game that we all know and love, plus a few all-new obstacles to overcome. Grab it quickly, because Froggster may not be around for long.Thanks, Chris!
Get free music for screenshots of your Dashboard
Not a big fan of Dashboard? Well don't kill it just yet, it may earn you some free tunes. Brian Stucki is trying to collect as many Dashboard screenshots as he can, and to that end he's created a contest. The person who sends him the greatest number of screenshots of his/her Dashboard with the widgets in various configurations will win a $30 gift certificate to the iTunes Music Store. Here are the specifics:Any Screen Resolution is ok.Send in as many as you’d like, but be sure that each one is different. (change out widgets, move them around, or have a different desktop behind the dashboard.)Please be aware of any personal info you may have on your dashboard, such as a WAN ip address.Multiple submissions will be grouped by email address so be sure to send from the same address each time. More then one screenshot per email is ok.The contest will end Monday Aug, 15, 2005. So spend a few minutes clicking away, send Brian your snaps and maybe win some music.
Widget watch: Disable Dashboard
Here's a seemingly oxymoronic Dashboard widget. The Disable Dashboard widget does just that - one click and Dashboard quits. The widget's author, Natal Vande Casteele, writes: "It’s been commented elsewhere that running “killall dock” and never launching the Dashboard basically has the same effect. This is true but I prefer to disable the Dashboard altogether to prevent accidentally starting it up."He also notes that it's probably a good idea to remember to re-enable Dashboard before installing any system updates. You can use his Disable & Enable Dashboard Utility for his purpose.[Via Download Squad]
Widget Watch: Oblique
I'm not a big Widget guy. I don't hate them, but I like to get my weather from WeatherPop, so I don't often launch Dashboard. Oblique just may change that.It looks elegant, and its function is simple. Click on the widget and you are greeted with a simple phrase meant to inspire you, or make you think differently (where have I heard that before?).Based on the 'Oblique Strategies' cards, and free for download, here is a smattering of phrases it will produce:Do something boringJust carry onOnly a part, not the whole
Filemaker releases Automator actions
Finally! I have been waiting for this for a while now. Earlier this week FileMaker released a set of Automator actions, allowing users to create a workflow of FileMaker scripts that can be run right from the desktop. Among the fifteen included actions are Find FileMaker Pro Items, Close Database, Get IDs of Current Records, Get Record Data and Go to Layout. These actions, when used as part of a workflow, execute the corresponding FileMaker script steps or database operations in an open FileMaker database. Sweet.As with the FileMaker Dashboard widget, this is a technological preview, so bear that in mind. But I'm having fun with it so far.[Via Automatorworld]
Widget watch: Nascar news
Having grown up with Pocono Downs in my backyard, I keep a special place in my heart for auto racing (I still have the picture of me at 7 standing next to Mario Andretti's car). So I was happy to find Nascar News by Travel Widgets. Nascar News displays the RSS feeds of several racing news outlets, including Fox Sports, Nextel Cup, Busch Series and Truck Series. Click any news item to read more detail in your browser. Incidentally, Travel Widgets makes some other interesting widgets, including a few webcam viewers, like the Oregon coast and Washington coast, several lighthouse cams (the closest one to my house I could find was Nantucket harbor), a hurricane tracker and NOAA weather radio. Check them out.
Widget watch: Radar in Motion
I first saw this widget earlier in the week at Macworld when someone sitting next to me pulled it up on his dashboard. Radar in Motion pulls a radar image of a user-specified location (either zip code or a more general region) from The Weather Channel and displays the animation. Click it while its running to zoom in for a larger image. Click again and it zooms back. Preferences include refresh rate, animation speed and a slew of maps to choose from. Check it out, it's fun.
Widget watch: TV Tracker updated
One of the widgets I use regularly is TV Tracker (and it seems I'm not the only one), which simply displays television listings. It seems that the Mac OS 10.4.2 update broke it, as it kept asking me to configure it over and over, and wouldn't display listings. Today I found that Monkey Business Labs has released an update, version 1.5.1, that gets things working again. Also added in this version is an option to automatically download updates in the background.
Widget watch: Google maps
Here's another widget that I'd dare categorize as "useful." The Google maps widget works much like the Google maps webpage, in that it provides a very clean way to view maps and satellite photos of locations in the US, UK and Canada. Navigate maps in the widget by zooming in and out or scrolling left or right. Pretty nice.
Snell on Dashboard
Speaking of widgets, Jason Snell has set his sites this week on Dashboard, after putting the spotlight on Spotlight and iChat in his previous weeks' discussions of new Tiger features.
