“What’s a widget?” – Rodney Dangerfield Back To School
Widget is a general-purpose term, or placeholder name, for any unspecified device, including those that have not yet been invented. It is commonly used in textbooks and other examples where the identity of the product or function is irrelevant and could be distracting (Wikipedia).
However, for me, these days, Widget refers to the mini-applications that let you perform common tasks and provide you with fast access to information, courtesy of Apple Computer’s Dashboard program. The reason I bring this up is that I am currently waiting to leave my apartment to pick my brother up from the airport. However, before he got on the plane (earlier this afternoon) he called to tell me that his flight was delayed.
In previous years (or for those of you who don’t have a Mac) this would mean either guestimating his time of arrival based on the original departure time plus the length of delay to determine when to leave for the airport (usually resulting in one party having to wait an unnecessary amount of time as often these calculations are not very reliable) or calling the airline itself to get some kind of update (which given my well-documented predilection towards laziness is not something that I am inclined to do).
But now, thanks to my flight tracker widget, I can easily track Jason’s (my brother for those unaware) flight with a few simple clicks of my mouse (actually I have a laptop and use the pad, but you know what I mean). So, even though his flight is running (as of this moment…it updates regularly) 2 hours and 7 minutes late, I can leave my house at an appropriate time and ensure that neither of us has to wait (long…assuming traffic cooperates, but either way worst case scenario is he’ll be the one waiting and not me, and really that’s all I care about here, if I were the one arriving at the airport this would obviously change). So let me just say thank you Apple Computers, and thank you Flight Tracker Widget.
For those of you wondering what else can I do with my widgets? I will tell you, the answer is many, many great things. I have listed some of them below.
Some other great functions widgets provide include (but are not limited to…seriously there’s tons available to download):
-dictionary/thesaurus
-calculator
-weather forecast
-world clock
-stock tracker
-phone book access
-wikipedia access
-unit converter
-address book
-iTunes controls
-a random Family Guy quote generator
and
-foreign language translation to over 12 languages (English)
traduccion del idioma extranjero sobre a doce lenguajes (Spanish)
fremdspracheubersetzung zu uber zwolf sprachen (German)
traduction de langue etrangere a plus de douze languages (French)
vreemde taaltranlation aan meer dan twaalf talen (Dutch)
tranlation da lingua extrangeira sobre a doze linguas (Portuguese)
traduzione di lingua straniera oltre a dodici linguaggi (Italian)
Most of the other languages have characters I can’t type. But if you needed to communicate with someone in that language you could just show them your computer screen (this is why it’s a good idea to carry your computer wherever you go, you never know when you might find yourself in one of — or talking to someone who speaks the language of — these character based countries). So, you see widgets really have something for everyone and more are being created every day (for a list of current widgets available visit www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/). And now it is time for me to go back to staring at my computer screen, watching my brother’s flight approach.
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