Friday, August 08, 2008

What's in Your Widgets?

Yesterday's post conveniently gleaned from my Typographica widget, reminded me that there are lots of things I love about my mac and computing in general (yeah, I just used the word "computing," So '87!). Widgets, those lovely little apps that keep me tuned in, make life a little bit easier (or offer the illusion of convenience), and add a pinch of fun to my desktop or home page are certainly one of those internet perks I enjoy. The widgets I use (or as google calls them, gadgets) are either part of my mac dashboard or my google home page. I like to let a widget hang a while in either of these locations to see if I use it or not, or how useful it is. Honestly a few wonderful sounding widgets have let me down (I'm looking at you Sing that iTune!, but perhaps I'll give you another try with your newly updated parser.) And a few I was feeling "eh" about have shown themselves to be very helpful. For example, the epicurious widget has served my hungry family well. I'm thinking this Delivery Status widget sounds fabulous, but again the proof is in the pudding. I'll let you know how it goes.

I use my google home page widgets most frequently (what does that say about the time I spend on the net?). I even have a second home page tab expressly for wedding related widgets. My favorite google gadgets are Be Twittered, The Onion, Flickr, and Gmail. I love the convenience of opening up a single page and seeing new twitters from those I'm following, recent entries to my gmail inbox, newly uploaded photos from my flickr contacts, and of course hilarious Onion headlines like "Soundgarden Inadvertently Reunites At Area Cinnabon."

I'll admit it, I always swear I'm going to take greater advantage of the apple dashboard, but I never do. It takes a long time to load and I'm only patient enough to wait for the most useful of widget apps. Those would be The Weather, The Calculator and my all-time, hands-down, most frequently used...The Dictionary/Thesaurus Combo (love it!). I'm pretty sure those may all come with the operating system. Still, the dashboard looks pretty and I am always on the hunt for new toys, especially those of the freeware variety. So do tell readers...what are your favorite widgets? I need something to keep me occupied while I save up money for an iphone.

8 comments:

vicki said...

Oh! I'm so envious of your desktop. Hmmm... what lovely things can I find for my PC?

Anonymous said...

I only use the calculator and Dictionary. Every once and a while I will play the memory game. I am on my google apps page more, but that is now filled with blog feeds because i prefer that to google reader.

Candice @ Jubilee Events said...

I'm happy to say I am widget free. It's too much stimulation for my brain to handle at once.. plus.. I would spend an entire work day toying around with my super fun widgets verse getting any work done!

Anonymous said...

I have a really good one, the Loren Ipsom widget. Guaranteed to save you lots of time when you need a bunch of Greeking pronto! I use it all the time!

You can indicate the length and even style of Greek that you need (i.e., paragraph, list, short sentence,e tc.). Or you can just do this super cool variable length adjust in realtime! Now, how design nerdy is that!

Erin Nowak, Designer and Illustrator said...

Deliciously design nerdy. I'm off to find it now. :)

Fiona Cartolina said...

I wish my Apple widgets loaded a little quicker too. I think I would use them a lot more if they loaded faster. I too use the calculator and dictionary(not that you can tell because i still have terrible spelling)
I also use the translator because I am in Canada and so much is written in french( I love french canadian blogs).
I also use the converter because we are metric and the US uses imperial measures so i have to convert sometimes.
I just wish they were faster :-)

Unknown said...

Ok- I'd never get anything done with all that on my desktop. I'm too distracted as it is... (did I mention I should be working..?)

Anonymous said...

Gadgets are nice as from Google. I used only Google ones not others.