Date: July 20, 2007 - Author:
As attractive as OS X is, one reason most people have fun with it is by adding a slew of widgets to help keep things interesting. Among the thousands available, you should have no problem finding a handful that you enjoy. To help get you started, we are taking a look at our personal favorites.
Two years ago Apple introduced to OS X Tiger a feature called Widgets. These are simple Java based applications that reside in a special window and are designed to give users access to various things such as updated weather reports, stock quotes, games, etc. It caught on, as Microsoft added a similar feature called Gadgets to its new Vista OS.
Apple equips each copy of Tiger with about twenty of these nifty little jewels, but now, thanks to the open sourced community, the numbers of OS X Widget applications have exploded into a virtual flood now totaling well over 4,500, with dozens appearing each and every day. These Widgets run the gamut from the not so useful, to the very useful and, in some cases, absolutely indispensable.
Today, we at Techgage, would like to highlight thirteen of our favorite Widgets currently available for OS X in hope that some may be of interest to the growing numbers using this modern 'Unix' based OS.
Our first Widget, Package Tracker, by Monkey Business Labs, is a great widget if you wish to know 'where-on-earth' that new fangled' thing-a-ma-jig' that you just order is at any given place or time.
Simply by activating this widget from OS X's Dashboard, Package Tracker will track any delivery from DHL, FedEX or UPS, by first supplying it with it's tracking number, thus allowing you to see, at a glance, the current location of your 'thing-a-ma-jig,' when it will be delivered, and the most recent scan activity. Package Tracker will also light up to attract your attention after your package has been delivered, and by simply by clicking on the status indicator your browser will go straight to the carrier's tracking page.
Package Tracker is simple, fast, convenient and very well integrated to give you instant gratification. I only wish I had this little baby years ago, it would have spared me a lot of fret and worry and nail biting.
The Stock Widget is one of Tiger's default Widgets that I consider not only handy but also one of those indispensable widgets, one I wouldn't dare do without. This widget simply displays your favorite stocks and their current activity. The Highs and Lows of your stocks can be viewed either as a percentage or as a dollar numerical value. To boot, you can even display a little graph to help you visualize your stocks performance.
Widsense is a handy widget if you have a Google Adsense account, as it will automatically connect to your Adsense account and download the last update of your CSV file. Widsense will then display the various statistics on the number of impressions, clicks and revenues for the current day, and, as well, the two previous days and the current month. You can save your login and password, so that you do not need to mention it each time you launch the Dashboard.
Book-Bot.com Reader is a new and fantastic widget that allows you to read absolutely free over 14,000 books! When you have other things to do, the Book-bot.com widget will collapse back unto the menu bar, but it will also remember the exact page of the last book that you were reading, so you can easily and quickly go back and read it next time. This widget also allows you to read your book in a 'low eyestrain' form without any need for scrolling the text. If you love to read, you'll love to use this widget.
CallWave Text Messaging is a widget for you text messaging lovers. This widget will allow you easily, from your computer, to send SMS messages to anyone, anywhere to virtually anyone. This widget is now easier to use, and it has much better integration with the Mac's built-in Address Book. If you love SMS you can now text to your heart's content easier and more conveniently than ever, all with a little help from this handy widget.
Ebay Explorer needs no explanation, as it's name says it all... allows you, in real time, to explore the world of eBay. Shop to your heart's content or just 'window shop.' This little widget will keep you entertained for hours, so if you're an eBayer lover this widget is definitely for you.
With our first six widgets out of the way, let's move onto the last seven!
StuntManiaJnr is a game widget that allows you to drive a little stunt car around a cool stunt arena, filled with a large assortment of ramps, loops, platforms and other crazy things, but be careful not to smash and flip your stunt car over. So the next time you need a break from your other computing tasks, fire up this widget and try to grab the bonuses if you feel like it, or just drive around and go crazy! If you're a gamer this little widget might just give you a big kick!
3D IP Lookup widget can bring IP geographical localization to your Dashboard in a compact, easy to use interface. Give it a IP address or a host name and this widget gathers path information running a traceroute and then converts the IP addresses to geographical coordinates using a web service. The output is a KML file that can be opened in Google Earth, showing a place mark for every node along the route.
This widget, of course, requires the use of an Internet connection and Google Earth (by the way, sometimes the traceroute command can take a very long time to run).
This widget now runs 4x faster than previous versions, but is still in early development, but works great as is. Any feedback to its developer, Claudio Procida, would be kindly appreciated. Ah, just one more reason to use Google Earth!
TrackIt is a widget for you numerical types. This widget will keep track of any number be it: Weight, Calorie, Miles, or whatever you like; and it will automatically create a simple graph to monitor progress. You can you use TrackIt for:
You can, in fact, easily track just about any number that you wish, be it one day, one week or one month at a time. Simply: enter your number for today, and a graph will automatically show you how it's doing over time. View by week or zoom out up to a year. You even can track multiple numbers by simply opening multiple widgets.
Asteroid Run is a gaming widget set in the distant future, a future where mankind has developed racing fever space-racing fever that is! In this game contestants get to race in the most daring of all races... the Asteroid Run, a race that forces you to fly through rings while trying to avoid the dangerous asteroids. Few brave souls dare to take up the challenge and even fewer survive! Do you think you have what it takes to be a champion, then by all means, download this exciting widget and try your luck and find out
Radar In Motion is a Dashboard widget that grabs radar images from the Weather Channel or NOAA and displays the animation. You can easily access the radar for a given city in the United States or get a regional map, including several international maps. The widget has options for displaying and updating the maps, including weather alerts and the ability to save maps for a specified period of time. Educational, entertaining and useful.
Facebook Widget. If you're a fan of the ever so popular Facebook, and who isn't these days, you will appreciate this fully customizable widget that will notify you of:
This widget automatically gets new notifications directly from Facebook, or will allow you to manually refresh the widget for instant updates.
Blogger Widget is a widget that, as it's name suggests, will allow you to add new posts automatically to your Google Blogger account. It is extremely simple to use and is handy for us types who like to blog, such as myself.
These, of course, are only a tiny fraction of the many thousands of widgets available OS X widgets available, so may we may revisit them in the future, but for now you don't have to fidget over your widgets, just enjoy them!
Most of these widgets can either be found at Apple's widget page or at http://www.versiontracker.com, http://macupdate.com or http://apple.com/downloads/dashboard/r=dbw.
Don Williams has been an Apple enthusiast since the earliest days and is a contributing editor for Techgage.com and you can find his blog here.
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