Dumb Dashboard Widgets

With the new version of Mac OS X, something none of the people who read a gaming blog (Not that anybody actually reads this blog) have or care about, a powerful new feature has been introduced. With the touch of a button, Mac users can now bring up a whole bunch of small applications called widgets - a calculator, a weather forecast, a calendar, etc. And there are user-designed widgets too - among the ones I have are a stopwatch, a clock noting my system uptime, and a search window for Wikipedia. The whole thing is called Dashboard, and it's a good example of how fucking stupidly worthless computer programmers are.

Some of the widgets are things you'd expect to be made early on - a daily Bible verse. I may not want a daily Bible verse, but I expected one in the first week. A television schedule, again, quite useful, though I found it a little puzzing that the television schedule took two days longer than the widget that counted down to the next episode of Stargate SG-1.

Other Dashboard Widgets, on the other hand, are just stupid. And so begins a regular feature chronicling the dumb things that people who can write simple code will make, if only you let them.

Today's batch of Dumb Dashboard Widgets.

Of Somewhat Limited Appeal: A widget, exclusively in Norwegian, that allows you to search a popular Norwegian restaraunt guide. Don't forget to order the Lutefisk. This widget follows hot on the heels of the Norwegian Yellow Pages search. The Norwegian Mac user is busy. This is what happens if you let them thaw out.

God Bless America: A widget that tells you the current terror alert status. Which may actually make sense, cause it's not like Mac users watch Fox News.

Redundancy: A widget that lets you adjust your computer volume from the Dashboard. Which would be great if, you know, there weren't a volume adjuster AT THE TOP OF THE SCREEN AT ALL TIMES. The award is shared, however, with the battery status widget, which, needless to say, I'm running on my desktop.

Dumb but Expected: A widget that checks the server status of World of Warcraft. Rats. They're still up.

Because Macs Don't Have Many Popups: A widget that tells you the latest great deals from www.gottadeal.com. Gotta pass.

Fundamental Design Flaw: A widget that finds you the nearest wireless hotspot. This makes sense, except that it needs to connect to the Internet to find one. Think real hard about this one. Runner up: The Yahoo Traffic widget, which is very good at showing traffic alerts, except that you can't scroll through them, so if you live in a city with more than three traffic jams, you're fucked.

Worst In Show: A clock/calendar widget, which is already kind of redundant with the top of the screen. That displays in binary. Only in binary.

Good job geeks! Way to make a really cool feature an embarassment to all!