Filed under: Software, Odds and ends, Internet Tools, Widget Watch
Turn Google gadgets into widgets, widgets into apps
Google, like seemingly almost every other web services company on the planet these days, offers a personalized Google homepage that allows you to customize the page with more or less the internet version of widgets. Google calls them gadgets, and you can drag and drop them to create just the page you want.Recently, Google announced they were breaking the chains that bind their gadgets to their homepage, allowing anyone to copy and paste some simple HTML to place any gadget on their own site. But why stop there? Dan from Uneasysilence dropped us a line about Mesa Dynamics, an interesting app company who has created two widget and gadget wrangling apps.
First up is Amnesty Generator, a free utility that turns any Google gadget into a Mac OS X Dashboard widget. It sounds like one catch with this process, however, is that any gadget-cum-widget is 100% internet dependent, even if it's something like a standalone game. This makes sense to me though, since the HTML is still calling out somewhere to get whatever makes up the
Second on the list from Mesa Dynamics is Amnesty Singles, which unleashes widgets from the Dashboard and turns them into full-blown apps. This utility costs $9.95 and requires Mac OS X 10.3.9 (though it's Universal), and I would imagine the internet dependence still exists for Google gadgets when turned into apps, though I would imagine Mac OS X Dashboard widgets which don't need the internet to begin with will act just fine without being online.
So there's your time-waster for the day: gadgets to widgets to apps, oh my!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
douglas said 1:17PM on 10-06-2006
gadget+widget = gidget. Sally Field would be so proud.
-douglas
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Brad said 3:19PM on 10-06-2006
Internet is the name of the network we all use. It is spelled with a capital I.
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Alasdair Allan said 3:25PM on 10-06-2006
I stumbled across UNEASY's post and initially got really excited about Amnesty Singles, turning Dashboard widgets into stand-alone OSX bundles would solve a problem that's been bugging me for a while. However it turns out that the company has crippled the application which means that you can't hand the bundle you make out of the widget on to a third party, not even if they also have a Singles license. See,
http://www.babilim.co.uk/blog/2006/10/set-your-widgets-free.html
for details...
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Brian said 5:37PM on 10-06-2006
Do you remember when you could read TUAW without someone pointing out every grammatical error? Yeah, me neither...
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Alasdair Allan said 6:34PM on 10-06-2006
Danny Espinoza from Mesa Dynamics responded to my blog post and it appears they have a developer programme coming up later this year, which would resolve the problem I was having. I've attached Danny's response to my post...
http://www.babilim.co.uk/blog/2006/10/set-your-widgets-free.html
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