8 Great Dashboard Widgets

Dashboard Widgets were the popular small apps that Apple Community talked about before the iPhone showed up. They still great for grabbing information quickly and these widgets will save you from a lot of navigatioting of your mac. Here are eight I found very useful.


iStat Pro - This widget is great for geeks who want to keep tabs on what going on with their computer easily. This lets you track things like your CPU temp, hard drive space and net connection speed. Additionally this widget let you customize the color and notifies you when their is an update for it.


Delivery Status - With this you'll be able to track your online orders and other packages going through the mail.

TV Forecast - Always know when a new episode of your favorite shows will be on with this. This widget will give you the day and time of the next 5-20 new episodes of your shows.


Sports Fan - The ESPN widgets that come with OS X would be great for getting scores if only they constantly updated and gave more than then the actual score and period. For the true sports fan their is Sports fan which not only has constantly updated scores with more in depth info but also standings. This widget cover Baseball, Basketball, Football and Hockey at all different levels.


Scoreboard - For the baseball fans that wants a widget that gives more info, this has what bases have runners and the ball, strike and out counts in a game in addition to the score.


This Day in History - History buffs should enjoy this widget that tells you both major and minor events that happened on the current date in years past.

Widget Update - Most widgets don't tell you when an update for it is available. This will check all your widgets to see if they are up to date and give you links to download the newest version for old ones.

Application Update - If you want to keep the non-Apple programs on your Mac up to date then use this which works just like Widget Update.

Got your own great widgets you would like to share, leave the name in the comments.

Its Time to Break Up iTunes

According to PC World, iTunes is the new AOL, and they are mostly right. It is a bloated piece of software that does too much for one program. It used to just be a program for managing music on a Mac. By the time it came Windows it was used for manage then audio only iPods and buy songs, which made sense to add to the existing functions. The problem happened when iPods and iTunes started do video. They now doing more then music and rather then making a new program iTunes was made bigger to handle the new file type and making it less fitting of its name, but is still media that worked similar to audio files.
When buyable iPod games came out, iTunes was now being used for content that could even be used on a computer but since their were so few of them it didn’t make sense to create another program for the iPod. The iPhone has since taken this to whole new level with apps. Now iTunes has gone from a music organizer and player to an iDevice manager. With all the things it does it’s impossible for it not to be big and slow making users hate and turn to other music programs.
This needs be fixed and the only way to do its to separate all of iTunes functions into two or three programs. It may seem absurd but there is a reason why when photos came to the iPod Apple deiced not to combine iTunes and iPhoto, they were both great on their own and the sync can be handled by having the apps work together. The first program should be iTunes core, it goes back to the old days and handles audio (music, podcasts, audiobooks, internet radio). Depending on how you look at things it may make sense to keep video it or give that its own program, the latter keeps the similar media, which makes sense especially when you take into account music video and video podcasts, while the latter would allow for smaller more specialized programs. The final programs would handle syncing between Apple devices (iPods, Apple TV, iPhones) and the programs they get files from (iTunes, iPhoto, Safari, Mail, Address Book, iCal and the Windows equivalents). This could also help manage the device settings and how they interact with Mobile Me. While they at it they should break up the iTunes store, it is already separated on the iPhone so why not let iTunes do the music (or media) store and the manager handle the app store. With the divided programs they will see more use and less complains about iTunes.

How to fix Digg

Digg does a lot things right that bigger sites wouldn't do or just take a long time to figure out. That said Digg has some flaws that need to be fixed to stop people from abusing the system it has set in place (as shown in this article) so that every story has an equal chance to get on the front page. Some of these are my ideas while the rest I got from others.

1. Limit friends to 10 - This is to stop the practice where users just randomly friend others so that they can create groups where people just Digg each others stories, regardless of whether they are interested or not. Its called "friends" for a reason and honestly most people do not actually know more than 10 people on Digg.
2. Fan diggs count less than those of non fans - This will put the stories submited by popular users like MrBabyMan, on more even ground with those submited by other users.
   
3. Make entering the story title optional in Step 1 - This way people can save time from submitting a story that's already on Digg from a different source. This will save people the time of typing a description and entering the captcha (that thing that tests if you are human or not). More importantly it consolidates diggs into one story from one source.
4. Burying should be transparent - You should be able see who burried a story, that way everyone can know who is responsible for a story disapearing. Burys should also not count more than diggs, if there is somthing wrong with a story the comuity as a whole should be trusted to stop it.
   
5. Political Stories can not be buried - No topic on Digg is more divisive than politics (ok, maybe Apple vs. MS). Many (not all) Conservatives and Liberals hate to see any story that go against what they believe or cast a bad light on who they like no matter how valid or true it is. They will unjustly bury such stories just to suppress them. That's why political stories should have their own system to be removed, where if enough users have a problem with a story it is impeached and an unbiased person from Digg decides whether the acusations made agaisnt it are vaild and should be removed.
6. Let users subjest changes to a submison - If a user can think of a better tittle or picture to use let them subjest it and have it voted on by other users. The submiter should have veto power to stop abuse of such a feature. I know this would hard to implament but would be great to have.
   

2 Great Firefox Extensions I Discovered because of FF3

Before Firefox 3 went gold a lot of my extension did not work leaving me to seek out new one to fill the void. Here are 3 you might find useful yourself.

Autofill Forms - With Google toolbar out of commission I had nothing to do autofill in FF3. When searching for a replacement I came upon this. I tried this years ago and its was crap at the time, now after a lot improvement and changes, it is one of my favorite extensions. The best part is that it can be activated by a icon in the status bar or keyboard shortcut, so you don't have to add another toolbar button.

BlueOrganizer - This extension does a ton including submit page to Digg. Lets say your looking a DVD to buy on Amazon. This extension will provide you not only with link to other retail sites' pages for that same DVD but it will also provide connection page for reviews of the movie and a Netflix page in case you want to rent it instead. It does thing for almost any product and something similar for people. Lets say your looking at someone's Facebook profile, it provide you link to their pages on other sites like Flickr. This is only the begging of what it can do check it out yourself if your interested.

Eddie Murphy and The Secret World of White People

"White Like Me" is a classic Eddie Murphy skit from his time on SNL. This has the type of boldness that only Dave Chappelle shows today.

Why Opera should buy and rename itself Netscape

Netscape was once a great browser but like many who took on Microsoft it ultimately failed. Part of the reason was that AOL bought it and never used it right, like many of the ISP's purchases. Netscape became bloated with features that didn't really make it a better browser. The ultimate insult was that AOL used MS's browser, Internet Explorer, in its own service software long after acquiring Netscape.
Today after years of being hardly being used by anyone, AOL no longer supports it. The Netscape brand had been used for a variety of assets but none have had great success. Netscape.com is just a clone of aol.com with some small differences. It's clear that the parent company of AOL, Time Warner, is struggling with what to do with the once strong internet company, never mind Netscape.
While Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari and Opera have taken up Netscape's fight against IE for market share they still have a ways to go before reaching the coveted 50% mark. While Firefox has a great growth rate and Safari has the Mac and the iPhone / iPod Touch supporting it Opera lags behind them despite being around longer then both. What's more is that Opera is one of the first to use new browser innovations, like tabs.
Part of the reason for Opera's struggles may be its name. If someone heard of it for the first time they may think its some kind of singing recorder software. Also considering that the art form of opera is not the most popular of its kind in today's world additionally makes the name not the best. While the company could just choose a completely new name its previous efforts to promote its brand would have gone to waste. If Opera could were to buy the name like Netscape it would be different. Netscape is well known as a browser and its name evokes something you would use to navigate the net. Plus the Netscape name would finally be attached to a great browser again which would make nostalgic geeks give the it another look.
Considering that Time Warner has in the past put AOL up for sale and Netscape's current status, the brand should come cheap. You may think why shouldn't Mozilla or Apple consider renaming their browsers to Netscape and the simple answer is they already have great names, it would be like renaming Cingular as AT&T (which was a dumb move).
I personally am a fan of Firefox but also like to see strong completion in markets because it usually brings out the best in the companies involved, so here's to better browser software.

NBC Universal shows still on iTunes

NBCU may have pulled out of iTunes, but Apple still has deals with the studios that makes some of its shows. Below are links to the iTunes pages of the shows that are currently shown on its networks. To find the listing of the studios just go the lower right corner of the TV page on iTunes.

Journeyman
My Name Is Earl
Scrubs
Stargate Atlantis
Chuck