Apple is reckon for a few safe thingamajig . Last week , the fellowship put the call out to developers through its Dashboard Widget Contest . To the designer of the winning widget goes the spoils — a 40 GB iPod and public recognition for a job well done .
Dashboard , of path , is one of the pre - proclaimed features in the coming Tiger update to Mac OS X. Back when it was first introduced , my fellow worker Jason Snell key out Dashboard as a combination of the Greco-Roman Mac ’s Desk Accessories and Expos´e . In marrow , it ’s another level of the Mac interface for run small programs — Apple’sWeb sitedepicts a clock , calendar , iTunes controller , and the like — called widgets . If you ’re still curious as to what a widget might be , check outKonfabulator , the Arlo Rose - Perry Clarke programme for running widgets that has the added advantage of being out now and not at some undisclosed time in the first half of 2005 .
Before you pop out planning which songs will contain a place of honor on your free iPod , realize that the Dashboard Widget Contest is restricted to Apple Developer Connection members whose membership admit admission to pre - release version of OS X 10.4 . I wo n’t presume to speak for you , but that condition pretty much precludes me from come up with a gizmo for Dashboard . Well , that , plus my staggering unfitness to develop software program , simple or otherwise .
But just because I ca n’t participate in the Dashboard Widget Contest does n’t imply I do n’t have a few suggestions about widgets I ’d wish to see once Tiger and Dashboard are ready for prime - clip next year .
I ’m something of a baseball sports fan ( in the same way that Steve Jobs is something of a high - order employee at Apple ) . regrettably , the 30 Major League Baseball team are crude enough to schedule their competition for when I really should be work . It ’d be nice if there was a Dashboard widget that let me follow the pitch - by - pitch action mechanism of any Oakland Athletics ’ biz , as well as competition featuring other , lesser team . ( For the record , therearesuch widgetsfor Konfabulator — Sujal Shah ’s Baseball Monitor is one of the good I , though you ’ll have to hold back until pitcher and catcher report in February to see for yourself . )
I also fly a bunch . And while it might be nice to have an applet that keeps tab on airfares for my commonly - traversed itinerary , that sounds a little bit beyond what widgets are intended to do ( or at least , my sympathy of what they ’re mean to do ) . A widget that track reaching and going away multiplication , however , might do the trick as well .
Those are the kind of things I ’m hop some enterprising thingummy - maker is tinker with — any other request ?
