The Image Upload widget featured here is a freeware widget by Model Concept which allows you to upload an image to ImageShack simply by dropping it onto the widget. The result is that the URL is auto-magically saved to your clipboard. The overall experience is pretty slick; it supports audio and Growl notifications as well as URL shortening with help from TinyURL ... at least it used to. Read on for my journey from widget woes to uploading bliss.

This is a gem for anyone who does design, both for the web and print.

ColorBurn is a Dashboard widget from Firewheel Design that generates a new color palette each day for designers to try out. The suggested colors also have the hexadecimal values for web design. There is an option to change the widget background from black to white to see how the colors look against each. With quirky names for the palettes and the ability to browse back through a 7-day history, it's a very useful little tool.

One of the biggest struggles a designer can have is trying to develop a color palette to use in a design. ColorBurn is that quick flash of inspiration that can get the creative sparks going.

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.

If you make any kind of extensive use of the OS X Dashboard, you probably close as many widgets as you open. Usually, that means hitting the plus sign at the lower left of the screen to reveal the widget bar, clicking the "X" on the widget you want to remove, and then closing the widget bar. Seems like there should be a faster way, right? Tipster Nass has a solution for you.

Next time you want to close a widget, just hold down the option key (?) while your mouse is over it. You'll see the "X" button on the current widget and can close all the widgets you want without ever having to open the widget bar. Sure, it's only a couple of seconds saved, but if you shuffle widgets as often as I do, that could add up to entire minutes being added back on to your life.

This being Mac 101, I'll also mention that ?-= will pop up the widget bar instantly without having to reach for the mouse, and ?-[left arrow] and ?-[right arrow] will scroll the bar. But you already knew that, having diligently read every page of the OS X help file, right?

Thanks, Nass!

This Lifehacker comment thread made me go researching on what I might use for Webclips, but save for the front page of my favorite blog (TUAW, duh), I couldn't think of anything I'd really want to keep on my Dashboard 24/7. I did like the idea of putting Woot.com (and Shirt.woot, which I've been looking at a lot lately) on there, but as a few of the commenters say, webclipping (can I verb that?) the entire page makes things a little too big.

Fortunately, David Elliot piped up about the Woot.com widget, which easily and quickly lets you monitor the Woot sites from your dashboard, with a minimum of space taken up. And now I've got two instances of it running on my Dashboard, one for regular Woot and one for the Shirt version. I especially like that it includes Growl notification, too -- if I happen to be working around midnight and a really good deal pops up, I won't miss it.

Of course, you may not want to have something popping up on your Dashboard all the time tempting you to spend money. But if you're already following the Woot empire (and to tell the truth, I almost never buy anything-- I just like looking), the widget is an easy and simple way to stay up to date.

Google has announced that the next version of Google Desktop (we've written about Google Desktop before) will allow users to run Google Gadgets alongside Mac OS X Widgets in the Dashboard. This new functionality should be available tomorrow.

I don't use Google Desktop or Gadgets, and rarely use Dashboard widgets, so I just can't get excited about this. However, I know they each have their devotees, so those among you have something to look forward to tomorrow.

[Via MacMinute]

Discussion has abounded the tubes recently over what appears to be a little oversight in Leopard's Conversion dashboard widget: namely the unusual omission of the Great British Pound from the currency list. Whilst some readers will no doubt shout 'So what?', as someone who routinely uses the widget, it's more than a little bit annoying - and I'm not alone there.

Whilst rumours may abound of Apple trying to stop us Brits finding out just how much more we pay for Cupertino's finest with the dollar being so weak right now, I'm sure we'll see a fix soon enough. and it seems to be working again.

Widgets are way too much fun. Though your Mac ships with a few of them already installed on the Dashboard, frankly they're kind of boring. I mean, how much fun is a calculator, clock, or calendar? Did you know there's a bunch more hiding in the far corners of your computer, and even more waiting to be discovered online? Let's take a look at where to find the extra goodies.

Feature: Web Clips, little roll-your-own widgets for Dashboard that will tell you anything the Web can.

How it works: Making a Dashboard widget isn't really that hard now, but it's about to get a lot easier. There'll be a little button in Safari that you can press to take a "clip" of a web page and turn it into a widget on the Dashboard that updates as that page does. Found your local weather forecast somewhere, or a webcam that watches the outside of your house? Clip that section of the page into a web clip, and you've got a simple, custom-made widget so easy Grandma can make one. Here's what it looked like in an old build, and it's probably going to be even easier in Leopard.

Who will use it: If it's as easy as Apple says it is (and all indications say yes), everybody. Anything on the web can be clipped into a widget, so if you can access constantly updated content (say, the top story of TUAW?) then you could use it as a web clip.

You can check out all our 24 Hours of Leopard posts here.

I've kinda sorta almost have Macintosh Dashboard widgets running on the iPhone. Some run okay, others not so much. The Weather, ESPN and Calendar widgets are some of the best; the Flight Tracker, Dictionary and Phone Book are among the worst. If you'd like to give this a try, download a copy of Widgets.app with the following understanding:

1. Widgets uses the XLaunch icon and splash screen and the Unknown icon is the wrong size. Sorry about that.
2. You must install System/Library/WidgetResources from your Mac onto the iPhone. Same folder, same name, same contents. Most Widgets will not run properly without these support files.
3. Install your widgets into /var/root/Library/Widgets on the iPhone. Widgets.app runs plain old ordinary OS X widgets. You must copy over the entire file structure, so scp -r YourWidget.wdgt root@youriphoneip:/var/root/Library/Widgets is going to be your best bet. And yes, you need to create the Widgets folder if it does not yet exist.

As I write this, there are 12 excruciatingly long days until the start of the 2007 NFL football season. This year, the best-dressed Macs will have spiffy new dashboard widgets to help us follow our fantasy picks, favorite teams, league stats, and every game nuance we can think of. Here are the top five widgets every football fan needs to have:

• NFL Kickoff 2007 Countdown 4.0 - If you need to know right down to the nanosecond how long it is before kickoff, this widget is for you. Okay, it doesn't offer quite that much detail, but it will get you within the minute range. The rest you can figure out on your own.

• WagerWidget - If you like a friendly bet to go with your game, the WagerWidget gives you point spreads, odds updates, and other tips you might need to know before you make that call to Johnny NoFingers.

• Apple's widget directory - There's all sorts of goodies lurking here, like news feeds for the Cowboys and Raiders.

• Fantasy Control - If you've got a fantasy football team of your own, than this you need this. It offers real-time news and analysis for teams all across the league. (NOTE: Requires the Yahoo Widget installer for Mac)

• Football Widget 1.1.2 - The granddaddy of all widgets, this cool tool keeps you up to date on everything you need to know: Current scores, previous weeks' results, conference standings and more.
  

• Sky Sports Football News Widget - In the interest of fairness, this one's for the Brits among us. I hear your teams play football with their actual feet. What's up with that?

Disappointed that one of your favorite sites hasn't broken out a widget for their RSS feed yet? Worry not, WidgetWizard's got you covered. Just fill out a quick little form, and the RSS feed of your choice is available in widget form.

Sure, it's not actually that hard to do, and the upcoming release of Dashcode with Leopard will make it even easier. But if all you want is to see an RSS feed on your Dashboard without all the fuss and muss of actually coding it, WidgetWizard is where it's at.

Thanks, Kelly!

Before you say anything, I know - YouTube is the last thing you need to have lying around at the flick of a mouse or stroke of a key. I just couldn't stop myself from blogging this because it shot to the top of Apple's popular Dashboard widgets chart, and it really is well done. The YouTube Dashboard widget allows for searching YouTube, displaying Just Added, Most Discussed, Featured and Most Viewed videos, and you can even condense it for those times when you want to at least appear like you might be getting work done. Clicking a video opens a larger window in the Dashboard to watch it, and therein lies one catch. For some odd reason you aren't presented with YouTube's video controller; just a pause/play button. Another bummer is that you can't log into your own account to rate or mark videos as favorites, but if you're just looking for a quick window into YouTube that's easy to show and hide, this YouTube widget just might be your answer.

The Dashboard is fun and all, but few widgets offer much in the way of storing any kind of data in a secure way. If you would like to work with a scratchpad in the comforts of Dashboard but also want the notes you jot down to be secured from wandering eyes, Secret NotePad might be a good option. With support for multiple pages, locking itself and even clearing the clipboard, this is perhaps one of the most secure widgets you'll find this side of the Mac OS X Keychain. Oh, speaking of the Keychain: all the notes you create in Secret NotePad, and even the original password you create to secure these notes, are stored in the Keychain for easy backup and synching with .Mac and similar services.

Upon opening Secure NotePad, you are presented with a small dialog asking you to create a new password just for locking down the notes you store in this widget. This dialog doesn't allow you to verify or even see the password you're typing though, so make sure you're getting it right. After that you get a simple resizable box into which you can paste plain text. Clicking the lock icon in the upper left of course locks the widget, scaling it down to nothing but the title bar and the password entry box. No password, no dice. Flipping the widget over presents options for locking the widget after a certain amount of Dashboard inactivity time, clearing the clipboard, default font/size and even locking the Keychain when you lock the widget. Truly, this is one widget your nosey coworkers won't get very far with.

Secret NotePad can be found in Apple's Widgets directory.