dashboard posts

Filed under: OS Updates, News, Web services, Google, Open Source

Google's new Dashboard sure would tie in nicely to Android, Chrome OS

by Lee Mathews Nov 5th 2009

When a few blog sites yesterday happened upon Google's YouTube video of the new Dashboard, they moved quickly to pull it down. Though the original video is still MIA, Google made an official announcement of the new feature on their own blog last night and the video above is now ready for public consumption.

While Dashboard is now live -- you can check yours out at

https://www.google.com/dashboard -- what's being talked about by most sites is how this move is all about transparency and privacy controls. Heck, even the official post hits on those points: "In an effort to provide you with greater transparency and control over their own data, we've built the Google Dashboard."

The post continues, "Designed to be simple and useful, the Dashboard summarizes data for each product that you use (when signed in to your account) and provides you direct links to control your personal settings."

That's fantastic, and I'm sure it's a big part of the story, but I can't help thinking that there's a tie-in to other Google projects. Perhaps Chrome OS and Android, for example?

Tags: android, chrome, chrome os, ChromeOs, dashboard, google

Filed under: Macintosh, Apple, Freeware, Mobile Minute

DashSaver makes your Mac's Dashboard into a screensaver

by Jason Clarke Jul 15th 2009

The Dashboard on my Mac perplexes me. While it feels like it should be a great productivity tool, the truth is that I rarely think to open it. I have widgets for everything from weather to my calendar and todos, and even financial information. And yet, if I never look at them, what good are they?

I started wondering if anyone else thought that Dashboard widgets would make a good screen saver, since that would ensure that they would be staring me in the face when I came back to my computer. And as it turns out, Andrew Turner thought so, as he developed a Mac screen saver called DashSaver for just this purpose.

DashSaver installs as a screen saver, and simply launches your Dashboard when the normal time has elapsed and your regular screen saver would show. There are no frills whatsoever in this tiny download. But beware - if you regularly lock your computer, DashSaver may not be for you. As per the release notes, it can't show the dashboard until the computer is unlocked, effectively leaving you without a screen saver showing.

It's worth noting that no changes have been made to DashSaver since April of 2006, so this program hasn't been updated since OS X Tiger. In my testing, however, it works just fine under Leopard.

Obviously, if you have sensitive or personal information on your Dashboard and your computer is not always in complete privacy, DashSaver probably isn't for you. But if you are looking for a way to keep those Dashboard widgets more top-of-mind, it might be worth a try. DashSaver is a free Mac download.

Tags: dashboard, dashboard widgets, dashboard-widgets, DashboardWidgets, dashsaver, mac screen saver, mac-screen-saver, MacScreenSaver, screen saver, screen-saver, ScreenSaver

Filed under: Fun, Utilities, Windows, Macintosh, Open Source, Beta, Windows x64

Kludgets lets you run OsX widgets on your Windows desktop

by Lee Mathews May 11th 2009

We've showcased plenty of software before that brings Mac functionality to PCs - like Standalone Stacks, DExpose2, and Flyakite. What about all those fancy dashboard widgets? Surely there's a way to utilize them on your Windows desktop.

Why, of course there is - with Kludgets! It's an open source project built on Webkit and Nokia's QT framework. On the author's site you'll find four basic widgets to get you started and there are plenty of places to find more on the net - like WidgetWorld.

The first Kludgets beta was just released last week, so bear in mind that not all widgets are going to work and you may encounter some stability issues.

If you're a Mac user stuck using a PC at work and are jonesing for your widgets, Kludgets is a simple way to access them.

[via Shell Extension City]

Tags: dashboard, mac-to-pc, open-source, osx, widgets

Filed under: Fun, Internet, Adobe, Freeware, Web

Sprint's Plug Into Now dashboard

by Jason Clarke Nov 17th 2008

If you're not a fan of Flash, you definitely don't want to check out Sprint's new Plug Into Now dashboard. If you dare to click through, you'll be treated with sensory overload, internet style. The page is a cornucopia of snippets of information, with one theme: Now. A computerized female voice periodically speaks, saying things like "13,628 letters are being mailed right now", or "8,971,000 workers are out sick right now".

The voice also invites you to click on the page, where you will find such treasures as a button that says Push Me, then when you push it, gleefully displays a message that the button doesn't do anything. The page has all sorts of running tallies, such as how many coffee cups are being manufactured at this instant, or the current population of the world.

As much as I feel like this dashboard is an abomination, it's hard not to explore it.

[via Daring Fireball]

Tags: adobe-flash, dashboard, flash-dashboard, now, plug-into-now, Sprint

Filed under: Developer, Utilities, Macintosh, Beta

Expose hidden OS X preferences with Secrets

by Jay Hathaway Jul 7th 2008

There are tons of useful preferences in OS X and popular Mac apps that aren't part of the GUI, but you can tweak them by using the command-line. That Terminal stuff isn't for everyone, though, so it's a good thing there's Secrets. This little preference pane from Blacktree Software (the makers of Quicksilver) is worth a thousand mini-tutorials. It comes pre-loaded with preferences for the Finder, as well as for apps like Twitterrific, iTunes, Safari, and NetNewsWire.

Among many other tricks, Secrets can change the orientation and pinning of the Dock, set how often Mail refreshes RSS feeds, show all hidden files in the Finder, and switch Safari's loading animation to a circle instead of a bar. One of the cooler Secrets is turning Dashboard on or off with one click. Back in 2005, we reported on the struggle to get rid of Dashboard, including apps dedicated to the purpose. Well, this is 2008, so get Secrets. You'll be able to do that and lots more.

Tags: Dashboard, hidden preferences, HiddenPreferences, Mac, Os X, OsX, prefpane, Secrets

Filed under: Design, Internet, Blogging, Open Source

WordPress 2.5 released, and all eyes turn to 2.6

by Kristin Shoemaker Apr 8th 2008

WP2.5 Admin screen, nauseating colors changed

If you're the more astute blogging type, it probably came to your attention a week or two ago that WordPress 2.5 was released. Depending on what kind of web space maintenance type person you are, you may or may not have upgraded immediately.

Today's big admission at Download Squad is that some of us, ahem, ignored the Upgrade Now! link for the last two weeks. It wasn't that we didn't care. It wasn't that we didn't think it was important. We usually love the opportunity to click on new buttons and thingamahoosies and ~~break them~~ see what they do. What was it, then? Was it laziness?

Pfft. Yeah. Probably.

But hot on the heels of the 2.5 release comes lots of talk and flurry about WP 2.6. It's something that would strike a lot of users as odd. Sure, developers have roadmaps, and plans, and direction for future releases well before current releases are completely polished. It usually takes a little more than two weeks for those sorts of things to be laid out on the table.

It would strike people as odd if they hadn't already laid their eyes upon the radically different 2.5 dashboard.

Tags: blogging, blogging software, BloggingSoftware, dashboard, software, WordPress, WordPress 2.5, WordPress 2.6, Wordpress2.5, Wordpress2.6

Filed under: Utilities, Macintosh, Freeware

DashQuit: Quit your Mac dashboard with a single click

by Simon Kerbel Feb 27th 2008

The Mac OS X Dashboard is a boon to many and a bane to some. Some of us reference the Dashboard many times a day, while others never use it, and wish that they could just turn it off completely.

Wish granted.

DashQuit is a lightweight Dashboard widget that will allow you to quit Dashboard with one simple click (does anyone catch the irony here?). It comes both in a Tiger and Leopard flavor.

Once installed, DashQuit will reside quietly in your Dashboard. Its default display is a reading of how much memory is being consumed by your various widgets. We were surprised to find that the widgets on our test machine were sucking up 83 MB of RAM.

If you wish to close Dashboard, hit the big stop button (hint: it's the only one on the widget). You will be prompted to confirm the close (which you can turn on or off in the preferences). Once confirmed, Dashboard disappears. If you want it back at anytime, simply call up Dashboard using the normal, default methods.

DashQuit is a free download, Mac OS X only.

[via Softpedia]

Tags: dashboard, dashquit

Filed under: Business, Design, Developer, Blogging

LinkedIn gets a beta facelift and developer platform

by Chris Gilmer Dec 10th 2007

LinkedIn, the professional networking site, has released new features, including a homepage redesign and developer platform. Sure this is going to be a little more useful to business users, but does LinkedIn need to expand and focus outside the business sector to make things stickier?

LinkedIn's new focus seems like an effort to emulate what Facebook has had with outside web applications. The new LinkedIn beta homepage provides customizable modules that display network updates in a dashboard format. This allows users to potentially be more productive by showing what contacts are up to, what news is most important to colleagues and questions and answers from your specific industry with the use of familiar feeds. But why stop there?

People that do business together and are connected via outside interests could possibly do a lot more on the site if more personal based modules were available. However, this is just the beginning of a component that is part of Google's OpenSocial developer platform so we will have to wait and see what becomes of it.

Nonetheless it's great to see that LinkedIn is growing...mind you slowly, and cautiously building upon their platform. Will it manage to pull back business users that slipped away to Facebook for more personal networking with these developments? Could it possibly ever attract younger users?

Tags: business, dashboard, developer, facebook, google, linkedin, news, opensocial, platform, social-network

Filed under: Macintosh, Web services, Open Source, AOL

Open XDrive widget shows free space

by Ted Wallingford Sep 25th 2007

When AOL introduced 5 GB of online storage--for free--there was much rejoicing. The service is called XDrive. But that wasn't the extent of it. For a reasonable premium (that's ten bucks a month), you could get 50 GB of online storage. Not a bad way to keep a few backups handy. AOL also jumped in the sack with JSON ("jay-son"), a web API that allows developers to work the XDrive into their own apps.

One such app is the Open XDrive Usage Meter Widget for the Mac's built-in widget system, Dashboard. The widget includes analog and digital readouts of available storage (in megabytes) and offers configurable thresholds for low space warnings. The background of the widget will change to yellow and then red as you surpass those thresholds. And, as the author of the widget points out--it's already compatible with Leopard, the next release of Mac OS X.

Tags: aol, dashboard, mac, widget, xdrive

Filed under: Developer, Internet, Macintosh, Blogging, Google, Freeware

Dashalytics - A Mac OS X Widget

by Nik Fletcher Jul 29th 2007

If you're creating websites, you'll probably know about Google Analytics, the once-expensive now-free web statistics service from the big G. Whilst you could, of course, log in to Google Analytics via the Analytics (recently-upgraded) website, it might seem like overkill to go to the hassle of logging in just to check visitor numbers.

Thankfully, Mac users can rejoice because Dashalytics allows you check visitor numbers, referrer sources and a fair amount more all from your Dashboard. Version 3 of Dashalytics came out just last week (with 3.0.1 being released today), so if you're wanting a hassle-free way to see just who's sending you all that traffic, this might be the very ticket.

Tags: analytics, dashboard, google, OSX, webstats, widget

Filed under: Design, Developer, Fun, Macintosh, Productivity, Apple, Freeware

Run Dashboard on your Mac desktop full-time

by Jason Clarke Jun 14th 2007

This is a tip that is probably only going to appeal to a small subset of Mac users, but those of you that have been looking for a way to do this are going to love it. The Mac's Dashboard widget environment does not run on your desktop full-time, but rather must be invoked with a keystroke, typically the F12 key. Other widget engines like ~~Konfabulator~~ Yahoo Widget Engine and Google Desktop allow you to place widgets on your desktop and leave them there full-time. If you've ever wished Dashboard could do that as well, Kevin C. Tofel from JKOnTheRun has the goods.

The process involves running a command in a terminal window, then remembering to press and hold the F12 key while dragging a widget from Dashboard to your desktop, where it will continue to run indefinitely. This functionality is taking advantage of the Dashboard developer mode, and is not a hack; Dashboard is supposed to be able to do this.

Keep in mind that every open widget consumes precious resources including both memory and CPU cycles. One nice thing about using a key to invoke your Dashboard is that when it is not in view, OS X is pretty smart about not letting the widgets eat up processor cycles. But if you don't mind the potential performance hit, give Kevin's advice a go.

Tags: Apple, Dashboard, Dashboard widgets, DashboardWidgets, Mac, widgets on desktop, WidgetsOnDesktop

Filed under: Utilities, Macintosh, Productivity, Apple, Freeware

Midnight - deep sleep dashboard widget

by Jason Clarke Jun 11th 2007

Midnight is a widget for the Mac's dashboard widget engine that gives you the ability to put your Mac to sleep with the click of a button. To be honest, if that's all this widget did, it wouldn't be worthy of a post, but this one does one more interesting thing. It can hibernate your system, much like a Windows computer can hibernate.

Most Mac users aren't even aware that their Macs are capable of hibernating, although they may have heard the term "deep sleep" before. A sleeping Mac is analogous to a Windows machine that is in Standby mode. While it is technically off, a small amount of power is being drawn to keep the system's memory alive. In Windows, you have the option of choosing to go into hibernation mode, which takes a bit longer since all of the contents of your system's memory are then written to the hard drive. This allows the system to turn completely off and draw no power, since unlike RAM, the hard drive does not require power to retain information.

A Mac's deep sleep mode is like a PC's hibernation mode. The big difference is that Macs don't expose this to the user, but rather as might be expected based on Apple's "simplify everything" philosophy it simply decides on its own when to use each mode.

So if you're a control freak and would like to save a bit of battery life when stuffing your MacBook into your backpack and heading out on the road, have a look at this little dashboard widget that lets you force your machine into deep sleep mode. You'll have to turn on the configuration option the first time you use it, but after that you can sleep a little easier that your Mac's battery isn't wasting precious energy keeping your Mac in sleep mode when it ought to be in a deep slumber.

Tags: Apple, dashboard, dashboard widget, DashboardWidget, deep sleep, DeepSleep, hibernation, Mac, Midnight, Midnight widget, MidnightWidget, sleep

Filed under: Developer, Internet, Blogging, Productivity

Get your Mint stats via Growl

by David Chartier Apr 28th 2007

We're big fans of web stats packages, and Shaun Inman's powerful and flexible Mint is definitely near the top of our list. While Mint and its various plugins can watch all manner of web stats and there are even widgets to check some stats from the comforts of your desktop, Tyler Hall decided to go one step further and has built a pepper (i.e. - a plugin for Mint) simply titled php-Growl that can send some Mint statistics to Growl, the Mac OS X system notification utility. While it can take some configuring (the comments at the Peppermint Tea post where we found this offer a good overview), this sounds like a handy way to keep an eye on stats without having to furiously refresh your Mint page or run yet another Dashboard widget.

php-Growl is being hosted at Google Code and is distributed under the MIT License.

Tags: dashboard, growl, mac, mint, os x, OsX, php, php growl, PhpGrowl, shaun inman, ShaunInman, statistics, web stats, WebStats

Filed under: Developer, Macintosh, Web services, Apple, Social Software

Dev Chair : Create a Tumblr widget using Dashcode

by Alex Hung Mar 26th 2007

Back in December Apple released a beta version of Dashcode, a programming environment which makes it easy to develop OS X Dashboard widgets. The problem with Dashcode is that there is not much information on how to use it available on the internet. Even the documentation that comes with Dashcode provides only the most basic information and does not currently link back to Dashboard documentation.

Meanwhile, we like Tumblr here at Download Squad. It is great for posting quick snippet of content onto a blog-like web page without the need to compose a full length blog post. Tumblr provides a great bookmarklet to make this process even easier. You just click on it to post the current web page in your browser to Tumblr, or you can select some text which becomes a quote on your Tumblr.

Last week, I realised that Tumblr makes an ideal candidate for a Dashboard widget! So I decided to combine these two ingredients and see how easy it is to make a Tumblr widget using Dashcode.

Tags: apple, dashboard, dashcode, javascript, osx, tumblr, widget

Filed under: Fun, Internet, Features, Macintosh, Apple, Commercial

How to make your own Dashboard Widget with Dashcode

by Chris Brentano Jan 8th 2007

Making your own Dashboard Widgets for Mac OS X is nothing new, but making your own Widgets using the Dashcode Developer Beta changes the entire process. Apple has taken the ease of use of Xcode and whittled it down to scale, providing all the tools necessary to quickly and easily develop your own Widgets. In this How To I'll show you how to go about creating a Download Squad RSS widget. Follow along if you like, but by all means feel free to improvise.

This is a very simple How To and is not intended to teach you how to code a Widget from scratch, but to show you how easy it is with Dashcode to create one. If you would like to find out more about developing Dashboard Widgets, check this guide on Apple's site.

Tags: apple, dashboard, dashcode, how to, howto, mac, mac os x, widget

Graveyard Shift - zombie-busting Time Waster

With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet. They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...

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