Apple’s OSX has a neat little program called Dashboard, and when you click on it these cute little widgets pop up. It’s nice to have the miscellaneous applications in one place where they’re easily accessible, but to be honest they’re pretty boring. But it doesn’t have to be, because Dashboard can be easily customized regardless of whatever wireless internet providers you are using.
The standard widgets available on Dashboard are pretty, well, standard. You have a calendar, calculator, clock and weather display already set up. If you click on the little plus sign on the bottom left a row pops up with 13 other widgets that, again, are pretty standard. These include stock updates, a dictionary and thesaurus, and a ski report widget. They’re okay, but certainly nothing to write home about, and if you didn’t know you could add more then you might not use Dashboard at all. Well, except for the time when you couldn’t find your calculator.
You can download widgets directly from the Apple website, and they’ve got lots! There are 25 separate categories, each containing no less than 50 widgets with more added regularly. There’s definitely something for everyone, ranging from hardcore sports fans to Trekkies. Categories include Food, Games, Travel, Shopping, Webcams, Music, News and many more. You can search by using the Widget Browser, which has separate windows for Category, Widget and Info. You can also use the pull down menu which will take you to a separate page for each category and lists the Widgets with a one sentence description.
Once you’ve downloaded and installed all the Widgets you want, it’s time to customize your interface. Open up Dashboard, click the plus sign on the lower left hand, and all your Widgets should appear again. Drag and drop them onto your screen. You’ll be able to arrange them how you like, and if you want to remove one all you have to do is click on the little black circle with the white X.