Tag: widget

The end of screensavers?

Widgets everywhere

Something I picked up somewhere today. The concept of a screensaver is quite simple.

A screensaver is a computer program originally designed to conserve the image quality of computer displays by blanking the screen or filling them with moving images or patterns when the computers are not in use. Today, screensavers are primarily used for entertainment or security purposes.

So with all the best screensavers now being RSS or internet connected and widget engines being common on desktops now. Doesn't it make sense to do away with screensavers and go for a special widget mode. For example it would be really cool if instead of going to a screensaver, the computer simply moved all the windows and applications back and showed the desktop and an array of widgets. Like most widget engines, it could dull the background so you avoid the burn-in effect. I'm also thinking the widgets in that mode would be either be locked or ones which are informational only. So you can't bypass security through a widget. Anyway it was just a thought….

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BBC Backstage Widget Competition

So those talented guys at Backstage.bbc.co.uk just launched a Widget competition. The prizes include a Origami PC and Nokia Internet Tablet but the other interesting thing is there will a meetup event where the winners will be announced.

I'm still new to widget creation so, I'm also going to try making a couple and link to any resources which I find useful. Like we talked about internally this is not simply a competition where we put it out there and expect submissions back. This is a conversation, and we will be listening and learning during the month. So good luck and subscribe to the mailing list for more information.

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PIM Overview please enable URL’s

PIM Overview

Quick thought, I was messing around today looking at new widgets for Konfabulator for my laptop and workstation computers. I havent really messed with Konfabulator since Yahoo! bought it, I just simply downloaded the updates and kept all my old widgets the same. Anyhow, I had a good look through them today and found this really nice one by Yahoo called PIM Overview.widget. What it does is look at your Outlook or Ical file and displays the data as a Windows mobile type today screen. This is great if your running Outlook as it just picks up the outlook pst file and goes from there. If your using ical you need to point to a place where the ical files actually exist. Luckly I've been playing with Mozilla Sunbird, so I was able to point to somewhere on the local machine.

But what I dont get is, why is there no option to look at a remote calendar? A simple URL out to Eventful or even Upcoming.org would be so useful to people who dont use Outlook and may not use a application as such. This would make so much sense for Yahoo! as Konfabulator is now a Yahoo application and Upcoming.org is a Yahoo! service. I mean what more of a reason do you need Yahoo? Hell, I might even try doing it myself, I've been meaning to build and hack a few widgets for a while.

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