I keep meaning to write a post about Konfabulator ... a tool that has made my life better over the last few months ... and now that it's free (was $20) it's time to post about it!
Konfabulator has been around for several years ... first for Macs then for Windows ... Apple liked the widget idea so much they put in into the latest OSX version.
What's Konfabulator?? What's a widget?? The creators say it better than I can:
Konfabulator is a JavaScript runtime engine for Windows and Mac OS X that lets you run little files called Widgets that can do pretty much whatever you want them to. Widgets can be alarm clocks, calculators, can tell you your WiFi signal strength, will fetch the latest stock quotes for your preferred symbols, and even give your current local weather.
Here are the widgets I run which I've found very useful...
Radar Widget - displays doppler radar images updated every 10 minutes from weather.com. I've never been so on top of the weather in my life! This widget and The Weather widget (below) are worth installing Konfabulator in my book.
The Weather - shows current temp and conditions plus 6 day outlook.
WiFi Signal - displays the SSID and signal strength of your connection ... and looks flippin' sweet :-)
Digital Clock - just a large sweet looking digital clock (same look as the wifi signal above) ... I have it set to about 80% opacity so it's always visible no matter what I'm working on ... helps me keep track of how late it is so I don't get a grumpy call from the wife wondering why I'm not home yet ... doh!
Battery - looks like a C size battery sitting on the desktop showing how much juice is left.
miniIP - a very small widget that shows your local and public facing IP ... can also show CPU, batt, memory, and other stuff
systemDashboard CPU meter - a nice looking race car dial that shows CPU utilization ... my workstation at work is hammered all day long. Hmm, must be time to upgrade ;-)
systemDashboard Uptime monitor - very similar to the CPU meter in looks. Tracks your systems uptime showing you current uptime, past 4 uptime periods, and max uptime to date. So far my workstation has been up for 31 days, 1 hour, and 39 minutes ... and it's running some big "server" apps ... so don't tell me Windows XP isn't stable!
What To Do? - very nice looking To Do list ... great for quick enties ... then later migrate into Outlook.
Why is it now free? Yahoo just bought Konfabulator and now it's free [article]. If you bought it in the recent months they're giving your money back.
So if you haven't joined the widget craze ... now's the time! Do note though that not all widgets are created equal. Some are major resource hogs ... and yes, there are widgets that can help you identify them :-)
Any other Konfabulator users out there? What are your favorite widgets?
I love Konfabulator. I have been using it for about 3 months now and it always told me to register but never gave me a cutoff date. Now that it's free (thank you for letting me know!), it is on my Win XP computer ready to go. On my mac I still use the regular dashboard.
I love the Flickr upload widget and the Calendar widget. I have a calendar in my YzDock but love to be able to see the entire month by just pressing F8.
Posted by: Sam | July 25, 2005 at 07:11 PM
I love these! I cant get enough widgets :)
Posted by: Terry Chapman | July 26, 2005 at 12:33 PM
These are great! Thanks for the tip.
Posted by: Scott | July 26, 2005 at 04:22 PM
Ya i started using Konfabulator when yahoo bought them and i'm really impressed. I love the weather and the one to find the lowest priced gas in the area (currently 2.18 on south Michigan street!) and Scribbler for extending your clipboard. man if they had one for launchcast, i'd be the happiest boy ever!!
-Kyle-
Posted by: Kyle | July 29, 2005 at 04:01 PM