My Widget
Working with programmers, I sometimes have the urge to learn something about programming. I’ve been thinking about trying to learn some Apple Script, or at least try my hand at Automator. Then I got inspired.
To create the IKEA Portland Opening Day countdown widget!
If you live in Portland, and are dying for some inexpensive tasteful Swedish home furnishings, this is your widget. IKEA is finally opening here July 25; no more 3 hour drive to Seattle just to get some bookshelves. Download the widget from my personal site.
This was way easier than I thought it would be. I Google’d “dashboard countdown widget how-to” and found this cool site called HowTube.com which just happened to feature a tutorial for creating a countdown widget for (what else?) the iPhone.
The key is an Apple Developer tool called Dashcode. Download it, and the world of widgets is yours. It’s got my creative juices flowing. Specifically, what would make a cool SmileOnMyMac widget?
Any ideas? Love to hear them in the comments.
June 6th, 2007 at 11:38 pm
Isn’t it obvious?
A TextExpander 2 coutdown widget!
(I guess in order to make this you’d need to have agreed on a date to release it:p )
June 7th, 2007 at 7:34 am
How about a countdown ’till … you got it–Bush’s last day in office!!!
June 7th, 2007 at 9:29 am
Jono: If you watch the HowTube video, they show you how to link the countdown date to a published iCal calendar. Of course, they needed to do this for an iPhone countdown, since no one knew what the date was going to be…
Lisa: Surprise! Someone else already thought of that one:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/justforfun/bushcountdown.html
June 7th, 2007 at 10:04 am
Presidential disrespect aside….
A good SmileOnMyMac widget would have the six icons of your programs with the latest release date of each underneath. If the program had a new update the icon would have a red square around it or it would flash, etc. While the icon was red, flashing or whatever you could click the icon to go to the update page for downloading. Each icons square would have a check box to acknowledge any new updates so as to turn off the red square/flashing effect.
The SOMM Update Widget.
June 8th, 2007 at 2:03 pm
Randy: That is an excellent idea! I’m going to fiddle around with it and I’ll let you know how it goes.