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So Much Stuff I Can't Recall

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

One Less Reason to Upgrade to Tiger (and good news for PC users, too)

There are only a couple advantages I see to upgrading from Mac's Panther operating system (10.3) to Tiger (10.4). One is the Spotlight search/indexing feature. The other is Dashboard widgets, little applications (like a calculator, sticky notes, stock ticker, etc.) that run in the background that you can toggle on and off easily.

Believe it or not, I do a halfway decent job of filing things when I save them, so while Spotlight would be nice, I'm living pretty well without it. Ever since we got broadband, though, I've been jonesing for Dashboard.

Thanks to Yahoo! and their acquisition of Konfabulator (a third-party predecessor of Dashboard) -- and their rechristening it as Yahoo! Widget Engine (yeah, that just rolls off your tongue) -- and giving it away free, I now have the widgets without the upgrade.

And Yahoo! has an XP version too, so PC users are in luck as well. (Switching to Mac OS X is still something you'll want to do ... consider this a free taste of Mac joy.)

Download Yahoo! Widget Engine here. The is what my YWE layer looks like.

Check it out!

(thanks to digg.com for the heads up)

Mikesell

4 Snarky Remarks:

Yeah, Konfabulator (or whatever they call it now) is cool. I have a Sudoku puzzle, calendar and a picture. I guess I didn't find the MahJong game or the one with the little beads (what is that?). I'm such a sucker for free stuff.
Linda
Blogger lindaruth, at 7:49 AM  
The MahJong game is called "Nu Jongg"; the bead game is "Chain Shot". I tried out a Yahtzee game, too; it was fun, but really ugly looking.

Which Sudoku game do you have?

--C
Blogger Mikesell, at 10:19 AM  
It's called the Sudoku pill. That's because you can make it small, but when you click on it, it opens it up. I still have it set to easy, but maybe someday I'll try something a little harder. :) It lets you check your answers as you go.
Linda
Blogger lindaruth, at 1:39 PM  
I gave Sudoku Pill a try and it slowed my Powerbook waaay down (even cycled the fan on). The "pill" feature is nice, but since I keep all my widgets on the heads-up layer I can live without it.

Sudoku Widget is nice (if a bit large and low on contrast) and more system-resource friendly.

--C
Blogger Mikesell, at 4:54 PM  

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