When I recently wrote about hacking Apple's Weather Widget, a common question was: "Can you tell me how to change Apple's Weather widget to use Accuweather.com again?"

Now you might think this is just coming from some people who don't like any form of change, but several people said that the new weather widget simply did not work for them, showing no results or incorrect information for their location.

Well, I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that no, I don't know how to hack Apple's weather widget to use Accuweather.com. I'm not even sure that it can be done.

The good news is that there is no real need to hack the Apple weather widget, because Accuweather.com provides their own widget which works really well, offering an animated weather map and a 15-day forecast (when expanded, 4 days when collapsed).This should come as good news to those who found that the new weather widget simply just did not work as well, but I would encourage you to check it out even if you like the Apple weather widget.

One minor usage note: I found that when I had expanded the widget I could not figure out how to make it collapse again. There are actually four separate views available which you toggle through by clicking on the "Accuweather.com" banner at the top of the widget (try it yourself and you'll see what I mean).

If you find that you get a blank section of the widget, which also happened to me, remember that command+R will always "refresh/reload" whatever widget you have selected.

iPhone users may be happy to know there is also an iPhone compatible page available.

Back in 2005, John Gruber wrote about Hacking Apple's Weather Widget to Show the Time of the Last Update.

I was disappointed to learn that my customized Weather widget no longer worked in Snow Leopard, and for some reason John's instructions no longer worked for the Snow Leopard version of the Weather Widget.

The culprit seemed to be the JavaScript that John had modified to calculate the time. Unfortunately I don't speak JavaScript, but with a little help from Google I was able to find a workaround which will enable this tip to work again.

Ever wonder what files your Mac is hiding from you? Maybe not, but once in a while there's a need to peek at the stuff OS X keeps you from viewing. Finder does a nice job of hiding the "guts" of some folders, you see, but there are occasions (troubleshooting, setting up a web server, looking for some folders, etc.) when you'll need to view and/or edit these files or folders. Enter hiddenfiles, a simple and unobtrusive widget that'll show those hidden files and folders.

Sure, you can use Onyx or Terminal and do some command line work. But it's much easier to drop into Dashboard, hit "Show" on the blue button and have Finder relaunch, showing all invisible files. I had to click on Finder in the Dock to actually launch it again, but when I did there were those lovely .DS_Store files, staring me down. I use this to remove the hidden _files off my daughter's PC-friendly MP3 player. That way she doesn't have to scroll through resource-fork versions of her songs.

The widget is free and available from developer Matthew Hansen's page.

A new widget has found its way onto my Dashboard: QuickCal. It makes adding iCal events as easy as typing a natural-language string such as "lunch with Aditi at noon tomorrow." The widget parses the text as you type and shows what it finds below the entry area, letting you know if it understands your syntax. It also adds reminders automatically, based on your preferences for all events, events more than a week away, and events more than a month away.

QuickCal seems to need the subject (title) of the event to be at the beginning of the string. Anything following the "at" or "on" clause is usually discarded. Since we're talking about "natural" language, this usually works out fine. It's not QuickCal's fault, but the only drawback for me is that my Dashboard takes far too long to start up, so any Widget I use has to carry that extra baggage on first load. I stopped running Dashboard Kickstart recently in an effort to speed up my wake time, but I may go back to it.

I've also really enjoyed FlexCal, an app which provides a hotkey-triggered HUD for entering iCal events and todos. In my opinion, anything which keeps me from having to load iCal and deal with the multi-step process of entering a new event is worth the money. Of course, both QuickCal and FlexCal are free, so there's no room for complaint. Be sure to make a generous donation if you dig one, the other, or both.

Up until recently, the Image Upload widget from Model Concept wasn't exactly working as designed. We described in detail a process for fixing the widget, however it was not particularly easy. The developer responsible for the widget, Tom Stoelwinder, contacted me to say that he had fixed the widget and officially released version 1.1.1.

If you were interested in the functionality of the Image Upload widget and considered the process to modify it too daunting, you can now grab the updated version here which features the fix we covered. Thanks, Tom!

You may already use one of several different Dashboard widgets for listening to BBC radio programmes over the net; but the team at BBC Labs has just released a new one that offers something a bit different.

It's part of a wider project called Radio Pop that turns radio listening into a social activity. As long as you're listening to your BBC programmes via the Radio Pop player (available in-browser or, as I said at the start, as a widget), you can "Pop" your favourites - in other words, flag them.

Your Radio Pop profile page shows what you've been listening to. Your Pops show the things you liked most, and give you quick access to programme information pages. Right now it's limited to live radio streams, but plans are underway to add the BBC's Listen Again output as well, which will make it much more interesting. (Developers: there's an API for you to play with, too.)

Since I'm in the UK, I haven't been able to confirm that this works elsewhere; YMMV. One additional requirement for making it work is a copy of Real Player, which the BBC uses for all its radio streams. Download it via the links on this BBC help page and you'll get a version that doesn't come laden with ads.

Is your Dashboard cluttered with tons of widgets that you don't want to see any longer? You can easily hide widgets from your Dashboard by holding down the option key while mousing over top of your widget and clicking the "x" button that shows up.

Clicking the "x" button does not, however, delete the widget -- it will only hide it. To delete a widget, click the "+" button in the bottom left corner (or hit the command and + key combo) then select the "Manage Widgets..." button. From this widget manager, you will be able to click the red minus button beside the widget to completely remove it from your Mac. The deleted widget will show up in the OS X trash can.

Those wizards of widgets at iSlayer have come up with yet another really useful tool for the Dashboard. Organized is a free widget with an event calendar, world clock, notes, and to-dos, all of which are synced to iCal and Mail.

As with other iSlayer widgets like iStat menus/nano/pro, it is obvious that a lot of thought went into the design of the user interface for Organized. It packs a lot of data into a very small widget and even has a feature I immediately turned on -- the ability to shut off Marker Felt as the default font for Notes.

If you download, install, and use Organized, consider sending these guys a donation so they'll continue to develop great stuff for us.

You may remember us talking about Minutes back when it was first released in April 2007. A lot has changed since then to make Minutes even better than what we first thought. If you're looking for a great dashboard widget timer that is just as Aqua-licious as the built-in timer for iPhone, then look no further than Minutes.

Since we first looked at Minutes, Nitram+Nunca has added:

• Removed Growl support in favor of their own unique system
  
• Changed beep for unique sounds
• Volume fading
• Plus many bug fixes

All in all, this is one of the nicest widget designs that I've seen in a while. When your timer is up, you get a small, nicely designed pop up dialog that you can click to stop the timer. You can download Minutes from the Nitram+Nunca website for free.

If you're in the market for a web-based GTD solution, Nozbe is one worth checking out. It provides a solid project management solution with contexts, projects, tasks, optional due dates and next actions, and it does it without a cluttered interface. So why am I blogging about a GTD website on TUAW? Well, mostly because of iNozbe.

iNozbe provides full access to your tasks on your iPhone. A recent blog post by the developer details how the same interface can make a great dashboard widget. The only drawback I've found to the widget version is that the rare event that requires an alert dialog -- deleting tasks being the only one I've noticed -- doesn't work in Dashboard. But with iNozbe on my Dashboard and as GTD-to-go, it makes a great portable solution that can be accessed from anywhere. iNozbe makes use of a very complete API provided by Nozbe which can also be put to use in scripts and 3rd party apps for things like speedy task entry and getting your next actions in whatever form you want to process them as.

Given the lack of Mail and iCal integration a web-only task manager provides, it's not yet my ultimate solution; I'm still working on that. But, with an API which can update/export your projects and tasks, it can be worked into a system with applications like OmniFocus which provide AppleScript interfaces for task manipulation. Remember The Milk and others also provide such APIs, and the array of choices for both desktop and web tends to have me spending more time working on my "ultimate solution" for task and project management than actually getting anything done.

Nozbe has a free account with 5 projects available. Plans start at $2.45/month and stretch up to business accounts (starting at $24/month) which allow for group projects and task delegation. If you're in need of a new task management solution, have a look.

We know that several of our readers do the type of work that requires them to track their own billable hours. For those of you using Freshbooks, here's a handy Dashboard widget.

The Time Tracker Widget includes a timer (of course) plus menus to choose the project you're working on as well as the particular task (meeting, research, etc.). Finally, add any pertinent notes in the Notes field.

When you're finished working, click "Submit Hours" to upload your hours to your Freshbooks account. Easy! Note that you must have API access enabled in your Freshbook settings.

RadioSherpa has released an Apple Dashboard widget that streams radio stations from Boston, New York and San Francisco (they promise more are on the way), including several HD2 stations. It's pretty cool, and even displays the name of the current song in real-time before you load the stream.

Note that you've got to install the VLC web browser plug-in to get this to work, so keep that in mind.

Here's something for everyone who uses Tumblr. Version 3 of the Tumblr Dashboard widget is available with some cool new features. It can publish posts, links, quotes, and web photos. Also, it puts a dash (-) in front of the source on a quote, which looks nice on your post.

I've tried it out and it works well. I'd like to be able to drag and drop photos into the body field, though. Maybe next time.

[Via Dave Chartier]

First we tweaked the app indicators, and then we tweaked the color, and now we've finally come all the way back in our Time Machine (oh yes, pun very intended) to two weeks ago. Innermind Media, the folks behind WidgetWizard, are probably a little angry at Leopard, considering all that Web Clip functionality, and so they've released a free widget called DockDoctor that will subtract a dimension from your Dock with the click of a button (and bring it back with another click, which is probably just as valuable).

I know it's not for everybody. I know some of you love the new Dock, or at least have gotten so used to it that it doesn't bother you. But this is OS X we're talking about, and so you should have the right to make your Dock look the way you want it to.

I'm definitely a big fan of iSlayer's iStat Pro widget. Whenever my older Powerbook acts a little weird, I can just pull up the Dashboard and tell at a glance what's going wrong ("Oh my, the CPU is running at 150 degrees again. Time to quit a few apps"). Now they've sent word that iStat menus, an even bigger and better stats program available to sit on the menubar, has hit version 1.2.

New to this version is process monitoring, better temperature and fan support in G4 Powerbooks (like mine), and a disk activity graph that let's you monitor disk performance over time. For keeping an eye on what's happening under your Mac's hood, there's almost nothing better, and all the iStat stuff is free.

Of course, if you do use one of their apps, make sure to send them some cash to help them keep up the good work. Always support good software, people. Just like NPR, if you don't support it, you'll lose it.