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Filed under: Internet Tools, Widget Watch, Universal Binary

Widget Watch: Widget Update

Tired of checking countless blogs and news sites just to find out whether one widget or another has been updated? Widget Update might be just what you need, as it can check up to four widget directories for new versions of all your widgets. Once it runs its check, Widget Update displays a list of the widgets that have new versions available, complete with which version is installed, what the updated version is and a link to one or more directories where you can get it.

This thing is pretty handy, especially if you're a widget user like me who has quite a few widgets installed, but not always running. Widget Update is available for free (and yes, it can check for its own updates) from DashboardWidgets.

Filed under: OS, Software, Internet, Security

Mac Geekery debunks Dashboard 'phoning home'

JC (yes, the Ungenius guy) at Mac Geekery has used some UNIX tricks to do some digging into the whole 'Dashboard phoning home' topic that's been heating up the Mac web lately. After all is said and done and JC lays out exactly what is happening, he concludes that not only is Mac OS X 10.4.7 not sending any personal data (which we've already been told), but you actually give Apple more data about yourself simply by visiting Apple.com. Here's hoping those worried about Apple trampling their privacy can sleep a little better at night.

Filed under: Software, Internet Tools, Apple, Security

Apple responds to privacy concerns over Dashboard phoning home

One only needs to brush up on the Windows Genuine Advantage debacle over at Download Squad (a sister blog) to get a recent example of the trouble a company can get into for making their software phone home (let alone adding an alleged 'kill switch' for the OS, but that's a different story). You can probably imagine, then, the uproar that has been caused when Mac users discovered that, after updating to 10.4.7, a little utility called 'dashboardadvisoryd' started calling home to Apple every eight hours or so. Immediately (of course), allegations of privacy invasion and Apple going the way of the devil began appearing, when (Gruber hit it on the head) Apple could have simply pre-publicized this as nothing more than the security feature that it is. CNET News has an article quoting an Apple statement as saying: "Apple takes protecting user privacy very seriously. The Dashboard Advisory feature is a security tool that ensures that the correct version of a widget has been downloaded from a third-party site and no personal information is transmitted back to Apple". The daemon is simply helping Apple check to make sure that you're running the same widget that is advertised in the Dashboard section of their downloads site.

Sounds like the crisis has been averted; nothing more to see here kids. Move along.

Filed under: Internet Tools, Widget Watch

Widget Watch: TUAW

A widget author known as tuc11 over at DashboardWidgets has produced one of the best, most useful, productive, and important widgets you could ever download: a TUAW news widget! It's pretty simple, and it checks our headlines (I believe) each time you refresh Dashboard. This way, our headlines stay front and center, so you never have to worry about where they went.

Good work tuc11, and nice use of both our logo from the site and C. Robin Osborn's logo he created for our video podcasts.

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