Widget Watch: John Edwards Dashboard Widget

Is this the future of politics? Vanity widgets? Former VP candidate John Edwards' campaign has released a widget that provides all the latest headlines from his headquarters. Unfortunately, the widget does not match the man for visual beauty. (Without doubt, Edwards is the single best looking former candidate out there--and I'm including you, Mr. Quayle, in my calculations when I say that. Eight hubba hubbas on a ten hubba scale.) It's kind of clunky. There's too much black text, not enough white space and a poor use of the red, white and blue background which makes it hard to visually scan through the links.

Of course, this being a free widget from, you know, a politician, the first thing I did upon downloading it was to open it up and read through the code to make sure it wasn't going to start revealing personal information, signing me up for unwanted spam, creating tinfoil hats in my home folder, and so forth. The widget does none of those things. The code was clean--a simple adaptation of some existing Apple classes.

The widget was designed by Ben Kazez, a student at Carleton College majoring in computer science, who has interned at Apple. I tried contacting him to find out the story behind the widget, but he has not yet responded to my e-mail.

Thanks Lawrence Sanbourne