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Dine-O-Matic (and the Dashboard widgets we love)
Merlin Mann | Sep 6 2006
Dine-O-Matic - Dashboard - Food I've never quite taken to Dashboard the way a lot of folks have. Like that completely baffling Spotlight results "window," it seems to just kind of live off in its own little neighborhood -- one that's just far enough away to discourage frequent visits. “Jeez, Merlin, how lazy can you get about hitting Annnnnnyhow, I finally found a "business case" for Dashboard today with the discovery of the perfectly-delightful Dine-O-Matic, a beautiful and free (as in beer) little widget from the graphical savants over at Iconfactory. This does precisely one thing: it chooses a random restaurant for you to eat at. That's it. No more whiny rounds of "'What do you want?' and 'No, what do you want?'" Because we now have comely robots to make these decisions for us. The dining-out singularity is near! You just pop in the names and cuisine-types of all your local haunts, and then hit the big blue plate. The widget flashes and churns like a slot machine, then picks out the place you and your party will dine. Awesome. Yay, Dashboard.
We haven't talked too much about Dashboard around here, but I'd love to hear from you guys: Which widgets have made you love Dashboard? Has Dashboard become an integrated part of your overall workflow? Or is it just a pretty amusement park? (not that this is bad) 53 Comments
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 I don't understand all the...Submitted by John (not verified) on September 6, 2006 - 5:26pm.
I don't understand all the dashboard hate! I use it constantly. It is way cooler than anything announced for Leopard. (It does help having Core Duo machines.) Word of the day Oblique strategies Dictionary (++++) Wikipedia Plus Calendar, world clock (I use fuzzy clock otherwise, and sometimes I need to know the real time), calculator, weather. Autocrossword and Sokoban get mentions, too. Widgets are actually very good for little games. Quinn should be a widget. I wish someone would make a law dictionary widget. I've got quick keyword searches for dictionaries and wikipedia and such, so widgets for these aren't strictly necessary. But given how often I use wikipedia, I can't tell you how much nicer it is to pull up via dashboard. And since I switched to Firefox, which lacks Safari's dictionary integration, I use the dictionary widget bunches. » POSTED IN:
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