My list of ten widgets that are important in every day use to me. Some help increase my productivity, some tell me important stats, and others, well, they just waste my time…Let’s take a look.
Capture
Take screenshots a lot? Then Apple’s chunky application “Grab” isn’t what you should be using. Go and pick up the widget called “Capture”. Capture allows you to easily take a screenshot of anything happening on your screen. You have the option to take a picture of the selection, full screen, or just the window. Click the expand bar of the widget and you get even more options, such as file type, quality, size, save destination, and the option to save image to your clipboard after taking it.
Capture will save you endless time when you need a quick screenshot taken.
The downside the widget has is it’s not yet Universal, a minor annoyance for the early adapters to the Intel platform.
iStat Pro
Are you one of those stat junkies who loves to know what’s going on with the inside of their Mac? If you are, you will love the iStat Pro widget from iSlayer.com
iStat Pro is a well designed stat widget for your Dashboard. You can monitor CPU usage, RAM usage, network, drives, temperatures, battery remaining, and more!
The widget has also been designed so you can easily customize it’s colour scheme, and it offers you a choice of horizontal or vertical alignment.
Bitsticks
Have you taken up the latest technological revolution since Napster, bittorrent? Bitsticks is your all in one bittorrent client foe the Dashboard, so you no longer need a bittorrent application getting in your way while working, you can download torrents in the background.
To download a torrent file simply drag and drop a torrent file onto the widget, and it will begin to download. Want to download more than one torrent at once? No sweat, just click the “+” button and another copy of the widget opens, allowing you to drag and drop another torrent file onto it.
iClip lite 2
Annoyed by Tiger’s limitation of only storing one clipboard pasting at once? iClip extends this to 25 so you will never lose important data again.
iClip does away with your “one copy only” conventional clipboard, this wonderful widget allows you to copy up to 25 items at once before you need to worry about pasting! The widget will improve your efficiency and productivity to allow you more time to do important things.
When you install and launch the widget, the first thing you will notice is it’s sleek interface, designed by the talented GUI artist, Piotr Gajos. Gajos has worked extremely hard on the graphical and animation side of the widget to give the best possible user interface.
iClip is simple to use. Copy something and the item is saved to your clipboard on the Dashboard, allowing you to continue copying up to 24 more items before you loose anything.
Flipcount
Counting down to a birthday, deadline, or important event in your life? Flipcount makes it easy, and fun.
The widget is designed to look like an airport styled check-in board, where the numbers flip over as the time goes down.
Very handy for keeping track of deadlines.
Wikipedia
Do you use the largest human built encyclopedia online, Wikipedia? Then quicken your access to the database of millions of articles by searching and browsing right in Dashboard.
Thats all that needs to be said about the Wikipedia widget, try it out yourself to see how powerful it really is!
Sing That iTune
Want to sing along to your favorite tunes, then sync the lyrics to your iPod? Sing That iTunes makes this task as simple as 1,2,3.
This widget displays the lyric for iTunes current track along with its artwork. The lyrics are saved in “Documents/Sing that iTune!” folder and you can also add your self-made lyrics in there. Sync the folder with iPods Notes folder to bring the lyrics with you on the go.
Sunlit Earth
Are you like me and often get confused at what time it is overseas? If you are, then Sunlit Earth is the perfect Dashboard companion for you.
Is displays a shadow over the world map where it is dark, and light where it is, well, light. It also shows the position of the sun in the sky.
Very helpful if you want to iChat with distant buddies but dont want 10 world clock widgets running in Dashboard to keep track of time zones.
iTunes Stats
iTunes Stats is something for fact-loving geeks who just have to know as much info about their music collections as possible.
The widget shows you how many songs you have, but it also shows the number of artworks, playlists, number of songs played, number of songs unplayed as well as many more fascinating facts about your listening habits.
NotePad
Is your Dashboard rendered useless by rows of stickies? Have you ever accidentally lost all of them? Ever felt the need to print a sticky or two? Or perhaps you’ve wished for something a bit larger (or smaller)?
NotePad is your solution. Presenting the ultimate widgetized notepad, with built in search, print, and resize functions. And now, with 2.0, you can sync notes your iPod, use several themes, lock your NotePad for privacy, doodle sketches, make lists, and more!
NotePad also won second prize for best Dashboard widget in the 2006 MacGeneration awards.