Great Widgets to Use
76Sometimes in my travels around the Internet, I come across something that makes me giddy with technology glee. Something that is I-can’t-live-without-it type of technology. Sometimes it’s a so-fun-to-use-but-absolutely-useless type of technology. Many times, that technology comes in the form of widgets.
What is a widget? you might ask. A widget is a small snippet of code that does something. (Fabulous definition, eh?) Let me give you a few examples. Then, you’ll understand better.
A widget can be a clock or an event count down or an on-screen sticky note. It can give you stock market information, flight arrival information, the daily weather, or NFL game schedules, word definitions, ski reports, or movie listings. And that’s just a small sampling from the delectable smorgasbord of widgets available.
Let me share 3 widgets that I use – and love.
The first one is the Mouse Odo Meter. It falls into the so-fun-to-use-but-is-absolutely-useless category. This widget tracks the distance your mouse travels as it scurries across your screen. Since I have installed it, my mouse has traveled 329.311 miles. That’s MILES!!! Quite a heap o’ traveling for such a tiny critter. You can have the output as kilopixels, meters, miles, and even nautical miles. Nautical?? My mouse doesn’t know how to swim . . . and I don’t believe I want him to learn! You can find this widget at http://widgets.yahoo.com/widgets/mouse-odo-meter.
So much for not-so-useful widgets. On to something practical.
Sometimes I find myself copying and pasting, copying and pasting, and then going back to copy and paste the first thing I copied. I wish that I could keep a library of things copied. I was thrilled when I found a widget that does that.
iClip lets you can store text, pictures, URLs – anything that you can copy and paste – in a small library. Once you store something there, it stays there until you delete it. It’s not temporary like your computer clipboard. iClip lite is free. (For $29, you can get the full-blown version.) So far, my needs have been met using the lite version. You can find iClip at http://inventive.us/.
Do you have a meeting where you have to make a presentation to corporate head honchos and you want to keep track of how many days left to prepare for it? Do you want to know how many days there are left until you leave for your fabulous trip to Tahiti? (Make sure you go to the island of Moorea!) Want to count down the days until you retire? If so, the Countdown Tracker is the widget for you. You simply enter in the desired date, name the event, and it automatically keeps track of how many days until the arrival of the event date. You can track more than one date or count the number of days since an event happened. The Countdown clock can be found at http://www.c3images.com/dashboard/aboutCountdown.html?version=1.0
And one more widget for good measure. (I know that I said I would share 3 widgets. But three is such an uneven number!)
I’m trying to learn to play jazz on the piano. But my knowledge of chords is rather limited. What is the dominant 7th chord with the 11th added in the key of B flat major??? The piano chord widget by Mekentosj has been a lifesaver for me in this regard.
The widget displays a small keyboard. From a drop down menu, I select the type of chord (dominant 7th with the 11th). Then, I tap the letter on the keyboard to correspond to the key that I want the chord to be played in (B). The keyboard shows which piano keys make up that chord and then musically plays the chord so I know what it sounds like. Sweet. Here’s the URL for that widgets: http://mekentosj.com/widgets/pianochords/
If you think that you might be interested in trying some widgets, here are three great places to start:
Apple: http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/
If you are a Mac computer user, this is the premier place to go to for widgets. You might want to check out the widget that will connect you to Mac tips and tricks for all things Mac (e.g. using the finder or preview or the Dock, iChat, iCal, Mail, Safari, and customizing OSX keyboard shortcuts). What a great way to learn how to use your Mac.
There is also a widget that helps you cook (SousChef), the Guitar Guru (how to play your favorite songs on a guitar), Schoolhouse (helps students manage homework, notes, and projects), Librarian (catalogs and manages your book, movie, or CD collection), Family (easy to use genealogy), and Knapsack (your personal travel organizer).
Yahoo http://widgets.yahoo.com/
The Apple site has widgets for only Mac computers. Obviously. Yahoo has widgets for both the Mac and the Windows. Nice!
Do you have young children? Then maybe they might be interested in the Play Spongebob game widget. Maybe you might be interested in Save Gas Tips, playing a slideshow of The Office TV program, monitor eBay auctions, or have an Amazon search capability on your desktop. There's a mere 5,341widgets to choose from on this site.
Widgetbox http://www.widgetbox.com/
This site claims to be the largest site ever for widgets. The granddaddy of them all. I gave up counting after 50,000 (doing an estimation and not counting one by one!). The blog category has 8,727 widgets, education 2,325, finance 1,017, and news has over 7.000. I'm sure that you'll be able to find something here that interests you.
Now comes a warning. Be prepared to have your time sucked away as you browse through the widgets! There are SO may to look at in so many categories that before you know it, you might have spent an several hours searching, finding and downloading widgets.
But then, what's wrong with that?
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