EXCLUSIVES

WIDGETS

Words by Barbara Mende

The release of OS X Tiger brought a new form of computing to the Mac desktop: the Widget. Similar to Konfabulator, hitting the Dashboard icon on the Dock or the F12 key makes these little mini-programs appear and disappear.

Widgets usually don’t do anything that you couldn’t do with a program or a browser bookmark, but the best ones are much easier to get to - and more fun!

There are thousands of Widgets and they’re all free. You can find these Widgets, and hundreds of others, at apple.com/downloads/dashboard. Just search in the “Search Dashboard Widgets” box.

The iCademy has declared a tie. These ten freeware widgets can brighten your days and don’t require a rocket science background to use:

All Recipes. Search for a recipe or category, click on a result, and you’ll go right to the recipe on allrecipes.com’s informative and creative site.

Go Go Redball! No redeeming social importance, but a great escape from work. Bounce, throw or twirl the ball and watch it jump around. It sits quietly on the Dashboard until you feel like playing with it - which may be often.

iClip lite. Remember the Scrapbook from pre-OS X days? This widget does it better. Paste frequently-used text, pictures, URLs and even copies of files into the
little “clip bins,” then copy them out effortlessly when you need them.

iStat nano. There are several widgets that track CPU, memory, hard drives, battery, uptime and processes. This compact version seems to give the most information per inch.

qwikALERT. Type “Pick up Jimmy” or “Podiatrist”; type a date and time or select them from the drop-down menus; and a reminder will flash on your screen, whatever you’re doing.

RadioTuner. With one widget you can get instant access to all of your favorite online radio stations, from news to sports to talk to music of all kinds. Switching from station to station is easier than turning a dial.

Scenario Poker. Play Texas Hold ‘em against up to 27 virtual opponents. You’d almost think you’re sitting at a poker table.

Sudoku Widget. If you haven’t tried the addictive puzzle game yet, this widget is an easy way to start. If you have, you’ll love it. It has four levels of difficulty with options for showing wrong answers and “penciling in” guesses. The puzzle stays on your Dashboard until you’ve solved it or given up on it.

VirtualEarth. Pinpoint a town or a street on readable roadmaps, aerial maps or hybrids. The widget is powered by Microsoft’s Virtual Earth.

Wikipedia. If it exists or might ever have existed, the Wikipedia online encyclopedia has probably written it up. The widget lets you read articles right from the Dashboard.