Long before any iOS, the Tiger Dashboard was its UI predecessor. A screen of little WebKit utilities, the origin of everyone’s favorite <canvas> tag, arguably inspired by Konfabulator, Dashboard makes it easy to keep tabs on basic information: time, temperature, and so forth.

When Dashboard was first released, widgets would always run the background keeping processors a perpetually occupied and Segin, my PowerMac G5, a little more revved than I would like. Sometime since then, the Dashboard performance situation improved, so I decided to give them another try. Here’s the ones I keep open in order of usefulness:

• Time
  • iCal — Lighter weight than the iCal application.
  • World Clock — Hong Kong, New York, San Francisco, and Salt Lake City. No family in Europe.
• Temperature
  • Weather — For wherever I happen to be.
  • HK Forecast — Detailed weather for Hong Kong. Includes radar.
  • Earth — Live satellite images of the globe may not be useful, but they’re definitely awesome.
• Reference
  • Currency Converter — U.S. Dollar, Hong Kong Dollar, Chinese Yuan, Euro, Canadian Dollar. Does it show that I’ve been traveling?
  • iStat Nano — System statistics. I’m always on the lookout for wayward processes.
  • Translation — From Chinese (Traditional Han) to English.
  • Dictionary — Quicker than the Dictionary application.
• Less Used
  • ASCII Table — Sometimes I feel a strong need for an ASCII table; however, since I’ve found this widget, I haven’t felt the need.
  • Color Theory — Though it looks nice and the color choices are excellent, I find that I don’t end up using this very much.

Next Time?

Done with the bling. It’s time to get to work. Time to talk about my shell setup.