Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with widget

Android apps

twine42 — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:42:03 -0800

I'm looking for suggestions on Android Apps & widgets... I'm after two things really...

The first is a general "what Android apps can you not live without? What really rocks?"

The second one is a specific problem I'm having with calendars. I've got a Google Calendar set up that also grabs feeds from my office and from my wife. HTC have a pretty cool little calendar widget that shows your next appointment in a 3x1 box. The problems is that appts for me and my wife are crowded out by stuff that my boss is doing. Are there any widgets out there that let you display the next appointment only from specific calendars BUT which don't hide the office entries when I go into the full calendar?

Can you turn a netbook into a Chumby?

bartleby — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 14:39:16 -0800

Is there a way to convert an old eee701 into something with a web-widget interface, like a Chumby or an AndroidOS-like device? I've got an early model ASUS eee701 netbook that's probably going to be retired after Xmas (if Santa brings me a newer netbook).

It's a little underpowered to really use for a modern netbook (and the keyboard is a bit too small for my fingers), and it doesn't have a touchscreen like later models do.

But I'm thinking that it might be a cute little cubicle companion at work if I could convert it into something that was a web-widget-based interface, like a Chumby (http://www.chumby.com/pages/learn_overview) or something that ran Android widgets instead of the default Xandros OS or the eeeBuntu that I'm running on it.

Something sitting off to the side of my desk with a half-dozen widgets (RSS, Pandora, skype, random flickr, etc.) that I can flip through.

But I also don't need to make a new hobby out of it. So if I'd have to code it myself, or spend a weekend recompiling, then never mind. But before giving up on the idea, I figured I'd ask around and see if anyone's done anything similar and had any opinions or advice.

There's a widget for that

chrisinseoul — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 08:17:06 -0800

There's-a-widget-for-that-filter: I need a write-once, run-anywhere events widget to keep the world updated on what's happening. I run a moderately successful blog in Seoul, South Korea (for reference purposes: chrisinsouthkorea.blogspot.com). One of my more popular posts is an 'events' post that gets published at the beginning of every month. I'll hand-type this thing after hours of researching and formatting - and there's GOT to be an easier way.

Ideally, I want a widget (with HTML code / script people can copy and paste anywhere) that can:

A: accept new event listings from selected users (or pre-registered users)
B: be displayable with filters (location, date, price, etc.) anywhere the code is placed.
C: Write-once, run-anywhere so other bloggers can contribute and post the same widget.
D: Is free / open source.

Google Calendar is the only application I'm familiar with that MIGHT produce something like what I'm thinking about. But Hive Mind, you are smarter than that. Any help would be great. Thanks!

Typepad blog question

londongeezer — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:08:29 -0800

I have a Typepad blog. I would like to make all my posts that are more than a certain period old - say, a week, but that might change - inaccessible except to people who have registered with me by providing their name and email address. Can I do this using Typepad? There don't seem to be any 'widgets' that provide this functionality. I'm not at all sure that Typepad is capable of being 'programmed' in this way, but I hope that I am wrong. Any suggestions gratefully received.

Recommend me some widgets!

Tu13es — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 18:50:36 -0800

What Dashboard widgets are worth using? For the past few years, I've disabled the Mac Dashboard to free up memory. I've now got more RAM than I need and am considering trying to use the Dashboard for pretty much the first time.

So, what widgets do you use?

What Dictionary does the Dashboard widget use?

ascetic — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 22:07:56 -0800

Which dictionary does the widget in Dashboard use? (Mac OS X) I really like the definitions it gives, plus the etymology, usage, etc.

Why are dates disappearing from Movable Type calendar

Ignatius J. Reilly — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 16:52:42 -0800

Movable Type calendar issues: Why are certain dates just disappearing? I am overseeing the development of a website for a client who requires Movable Type as their CMS. It is proving to be rather annoying compared to comparable products like Drupal. But we're mostly getting where we need to be.

We are having on inexplicable problem with the calendar widget, though. We have it set up properly, and it appears to function (e.g., it properly displays/links to entries for the specified date; the whole thing basically looks right; clicking takes you to the correct entry, etc.).

There is one disturbing problem, though: periodically, certain days just disappear from the calendar. The "box" for that date stays there, but the number is just gone. If I create an entry for that specific day, I can make the number appear again (this is obviously not an acceptable solution, but an interesting phenomenon nonetheless), but it appears to only be willing to to display "nonlinked" dates for some of the days.

I believe (but am not 100% sure) that this corresponds to the creation of unrelated entries in categories OTHER than the one being displayed in the calendar (e.g., the date is there, then I create an unrelated entry, then the date disappears).

I can't find any info on this error in Movable Type's documentation of forums (though, to be fair, their forums don't really appear to be entirely functional, possibly because they are built in Movable Type.

Has anyone seen this before? Is there some known solution?

Help me find a Crunchbase-like widget and database combo for custom data display.

underdetermined — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 17:40:36 -0800

Is anyone aware of a widget and database like Crunchbase that I could use to display my own data on my web site? I'm looking for something where I could insert a tag onto the web page (or Wordpress post) to call data for that particular item from a database and display it in an intuitive format. The database could be accessible only by me, or could be a wiki. Does anyone have any leads? I've searched to no avail. Thanks!

Looking for a Countdown Timer That'll Go Higher Than 99 Hours

interrobang — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 14:55:41 -0800

I'm looking for an OSX application, widget, or menubar item that will display a countdown to a date. Ideally, I'd be able to set it for, say, May 14th, and it'll show me how many months, days, hours, and seconds are left until the date. It'd be even better if I could run more than one of these timers at a time. I need this to work on Tiger, but Leopard stuff could be useful, too. Thank you!

I want to see what Google sees

BobbyVan — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:56:45 -0800

How can I make my Vista desktop display what people are searching for on Google? I was watching this video about Google's NYC headquarters, and they had a cool floor display that projects what people are searching for on Google in a cool, Matrixy kind of way.

So I was thinking that it would be cool if there was some sort of widget for Vista that could display live Google searches the same way, preferably covering my entire desktop background. I just want to see the randomness of the Internet cascading across my screen.

Is there anything like that out there?

Is there a Wordpress plugin which will hide sidebar widgets based on geolocation?

friedbeef — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 15:12:31 -0800

Is there a Wordpress plugin which will hide sidebar widgets based on geolocation? I have a Wordpress blog which has readers from the US as well as Malaysia. If I put a widget on my sidebar with promos from Malaysia, it would be irrelevant to my US readers, and vice versa.

Is there a plugin I can install which would let me hide selected widgets on my sidebar based on geolocation so my readers only see promos which are valid in their country?

Need a computer chess clock - for up to a dozen players at once.

bartleby — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 10:33:39 -0800

Looking for a Multitasking Timer: a bunch of timers on screen, clicking on one stops the others. Like a chess clock, but for 6 to 12 players. First, multitasking is a lie - it's just switching back and forth between tasks quickly.
But I find I now need to be able to track all that switching, without stopping in between to jot down the time and task every time I switch.

Metaphorical scenario: Right now, all I can say about what I did today is that I made Thanksgiving dinner for 8, with turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, candied yams, apple pie, bread, and a green salad. I order to get it all done, several things were always going on at once at all times, with a lot of switching around. I have no time how much time I spent focussed on each thing, and I can't say that it takes 6 hours to cook a turkey because most of that time it's in the oven and I'm doing something else.

I now find myself in a position where I need instead to be able to report that I spent my time actually focused on
3.5 hours for turkey
2.0 hours on pie
20 minutes on cranberry sauce
45 minutes on the salad
25 minutes setting the table
etc.
So that all that time can now be analyzed, saying that while the homemade cranberry sauce has maximal benefit with minimal time, the bread could be outsourced without affecting overall meal quality, and the salad should be discontinued because no one ever eats it anyway so it's a waste of my time.

If I had some way of having several renamable timer widgets that I could call up, and click on the course I was preparing just that moment, I would be a happy chef. One timer would stop whenever another timer was clicked on, and resume its count when clicked again - pie timer running while rolling out crust, stopped when turkey timer clicked on for a basting, turkey timer stops and pie timer resumes counting when I click on it and swap the baster for the rolling pin.

Chess players use a thing where each player has a clock timing their moves - Black's stops when he makes a move, which automatically starts White's clock, White moves and Black's timer resumes counting. A chess clock widget deal, where I could set up onscreen timers for Turkey, Pie, etc., that would then print me out a report for each at the end of the day is what I'm looking for. But I need anywhere from 6 to 12 players.

Does such a thing exist?

Widgets: Build my own or use a commericial site?

maxwelton — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 22:03:09 -0800

Widgets for embedding on other web sites: Write/host your own, or use one of the commercial services? I'm curious about whether there is an advantage to using one of the "professional" widget providers (widgetbox, springwidgets, etc.) or whether simple writing and hosting your own is "better." My woolly thinking so far:

Do-it-yourself advantages:

* Aside from potential bandwidth issues, no day-to-day costs
* Widgets could be tracked with site's own analytics
* No cross-branding or "brand contamination"

Cons:

* My clients are all in shared environments. To the host, this would simply be another page view, I'm assuming, but don't know. They all have plenty of spare bandwidth, these are sites that are lucky to get 1,000 visitors a day
* I assume there would need to be some basic security issues (though at this point I would probably simply output the widget content into flat HTML or text files since they wouldn't need to be that dynamic. so security concerns should be fairly minimal)

Ready-made widget pros:

* The heavy-lifting of providing an embeddable object is done.
* (Probably?) the ability to provide a variety of formats
* Security not my problem, if there are any issues
* Possibly a bit more exposure

Cons:

* The terms of service are worrying on some - loss of content control
* Possibility it can or will cost an unknown amount of money
* Co-branding

I figure I'd have a few more hours invested writing my own widget code than figuring out how best to leverage a commercial source, but that's not a compelling factor at this point.

If you have been in this position, please share your thoughts on your decision-making, and what you did in the end.

What's the name of this widget?

rodii — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:47:25 -0800

You know the little draggable overview map in Google Maps? What's that kind of UI control called? They're pretty common: the Navigation Palette in Photoshop is the first one I remember encountering. It's a small window with a thumbnail view of a larger chunk of a document (maybe the whole document), with a little rectangle representing the area displayed in the larger window. In Google Maps it's at the lower right (honest, it's there, just click on the arrow); in Photoshop it's a separate palette.

What am looking for is (a) what that kind of widget is called in general (so I can google for more info) and (b) any discussions in the UI or HCI literature with guidelines, best practices, that sort of thing. Thanks!

Is there a way to show all my blog posts?

jejune — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 07:46:42 -0800

Is there a script that will show summaries of every post from my blog, using a feed from a Blogger blog? I use this widget to display the first 100 or so characters from each post from a feed of my blog. When you copy & paste the code from that webpage into a Blogger blog post, it displays headings from your blog posts along with a summary for each one.

But the problem is that there's a limit: it only displays your 25 most recent posts. Is there any kind of widget that will show all the posts, with no limit?

It would be sufficient if there were a script that would let me specify: "Display posts #1-25," then separately, "Display #26-50," etc. That way, I could just combine them.

I'm having issues with my AddThis button on my blog.

bamassippi — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 12:13:49 -0800

I'm having issues with my AddThis button on my blog. So I'm trying to add the AddThis button to the front page of my blog so that readers can email/save/send individual blog posts, though it continues to save my homepage and the AddThis.com website is very unclear as to how to adjust the code.

I know that other readers may have experienced the same issues... how did you solve it? How should I adjust my code? (I'm using WordPress by the way.)

flip monitor horizontally

apdato — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 15:10:11 -0800

Is there a way to flip/ mirror what my monitor displays? I'd like to flip my monitor horizontally to read text backwards. Either a program or a hardware fix with the monitor would work. People have asked this on different forums but I couldn't seem to find any solutions.

How do i enable a javascript widget with Wordpress

Rabulah — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 14:02:23 -0800

I've set up a self hosted blog. I've got it looking pretty much how I want it, but I want a javascript based "advert" (it's an animated Kiva.org thing) in the sidebar. The blogging platform is Wordpress, which doesn't allow javascript if the blog is hosted on their servers. But it's not hosted on wordpress.com. I'm hosting it on my own servers. I've tried adding the relevant script text into a text widget, and then adding that to the sidebar, but the script text just gets stripped out.

What do I need to do to get this to work? I'm using Wordpress 2.3.2.

How to make Tumblr and WordPress work together nicely?

chorltonmeateater — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 12:33:07 -0800

How can I resize the output of the Tumblr widget to use in my Wordpress sidebar? I keep both a tumblelog and a WordPress blog, and would like to use the javascript code that Tumblr provides to display my tumblelog posts in the sidebar of the blog. Trouble is, when I paste the script into a text sidebar widget, all photos and embedded videos are not resized according to its width, making the thing look stupid and disappear off to the right.

Is there any way that I can adjust this, perhaps using CSS? Or, if not, is there any alternative way I could get my Tumblr posts displayed nicely in my WordPress sidebar? My web coding skills are far too inadequate (i.e. non-existent) to have been able to accomplish this myself.

Is there a widget for Yahoo! Widgets in that can embed/display a webpage?

chefscotticus — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 15:17:06 -0800

Is there a widget for Yahoo! Widgets in that can embed/display a webpage? I'm looking for a Yahoo! Widgets (formerly Konfabulator) widget that I can embed a website in to be displayed. I want functionality similar to the Netvibes "Web Page" module that can display any website given its URL.

(Ultimately, I'd like to use this for several things: to see my 30Boxes calendar [by displaying the http://m.30boxes.com page], to keep track of my To Do list also at 30B, to view MLB.com gamecasts on my desktop, etc).

I searched both Google and the Yahoo! Widgets Gallery (which is always fairly useless and painful to navigate). Other suggestions?

Need a quick and easy system or app to help keep track of small transactions while I'm out.

iamkimiam — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 15:01:39 -0800

I am looking for a good way to use my iPhone, Mac, and/or .mac account to keep track of small amounts of money that my friends and I owe each other. Any suggestions? Here's a typical scenario:

Friend: Hey, let's go to this concert!
Me: Sure, I'll buy the tickets and you can pay me at the show!
(two weeks later, while shopping)
Me: Crap, I don't have enough cash for this must-have thing
Friend: Oh, I'll buy this for you now; then I'll owe you less at the show
(two weeks later, at the show, trying to figure who still owes whom what)
Me: ?
Friend: ?

This happens a lot. We're not trying to scam each other of course...we're just having a hard time keeping track of and remembering this stuff when we're out.

At home I'm a super organized person...I use Quicken, .mac, iCal religiously. Now with the addition of iPhone I feel like there must be an easy way to organize all the small, on-the-fly money exchanges between me and my friends.

I am looking for either A) a method to keep track of stuff (earlier today I tried to send a text message to myself, so that I wouldn't forget that my friend and I are now evened up on a future event), or B) an app, widget, or calendar thingy that will make sense of these types of transactions.

I know it seems like overkill, but I really am that forgetful (especially when fun and alcohol are involved), and having a quick and easy "system" would help greatly. It'd also be great if the method/app wasn't a PITA elaborate scheme, so that my friends don't start thinking I'm a freakin' tightwad who must bust out her fancy pocket calculator every time a bill shows up. Also, my friends and I help each other out a lot, and that's part of what makes our friendships so fantastic, so suggestions about refusing to lend money or whatnot aren't going to be all that helpful. Thanks!

permoveo facies!

jackslashkerns — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 12:16:44 -0800

Does there exist a widget/web based application that realizes the concept of the Harry Potter fantasy universe's photographs/paintings whose subjects move and talk? Shouldn't there? This aspect of Harry Potter always struck a chord with me. After viewing the films, it seems to me like the "moving pictures" (Rowling deconstructs hollywood!) are just video loops contained within their picture frames, something I would think I could duplicate somehow on my macbook.

IANA web designer, hollywood visual effects editor, or wizard, and I want my Facebook photo to stick its tongue out.

Can Javascript recognize a CSS width?

captaindistracto — Thu, 10 May 2007 12:51:06 -0800

CSS/JSP/Javascript Filter: I'm creating a widget which parses RSS via JSP and Javascript. This widget will allow users to include an RSS feed in their sidebar, but I'd like the widget to appear differently depending on the sidebar size. Is this possible to create an if statement determinant on the sidebar css class/id without know the class/id names? I have my widget width set to 100%, so it will inherit the width of the class in which it's placed. However, if a user has a sidebar smaller than a certain width, I'd like to show an alternate view. The widget shows an image floating on the left, then headline and short description of a story to the right of the image. If the width of the sidebar is smaller than my min-width, I'd like the headline and description to move under the photo rather than to the right. Can I create an if statement which will recognize the inherited width without knowing the class/id name? Is this possible?

The feed is parsed via JSP and is displayed via a Javascript include.

Thanks for any ideas.

How to advertise widget contest?

wheresdabeefy — Tue, 01 May 2007 11:30:37 -0800

I work for an NGO that is interested in holding a contest for developers and programmers to create a social networking widget. Does anyone know of how and where to advertise such a contest? I work for an NGO in Washington, D.C. and one of our campaigns is youth-oriented. We are trying to create new ways for young people to become involved on international and social justice issues. We came up with an idea to ask developers and programmers to create a social networking widget that students can put on their MySpace or Facebook profiles. It would be branded with our campaign, but it could do anything. It could be a newsfeed, or a world map, or anything.

Unfortunately, we do not know where we would advertise for such a contest. There is $500 cash prize for the winning widget designer.

How can I replace Dashboard with Yahoo Widget Engine?

secret.osha — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 20:46:38 -0800

I'd like to know some specifics about replacing Dashboard with Yahoo! Widget Engine. I have a pretty cluttered menu bar and was wondering if there was a hack to get rid of the Yahoo! Widget Engine icon. On a similar vein, does anyone know how to get rid of the menu bar in the heads up display of Yahoo! Widget Engine? I've been trying to use it as a replacement Dashboard (since dashboard seems to be a memory hog), but whenever i bring up the HUD, there's an empty menu bar still cluttering up my dimmed Dashboard. One thing that I do miss about Dashboard is it's incredible Dictionary Widget. Is there a way to convert the Dictionary Widget to Yahoo! Widget Engine format?

I figured out how to prevent Dashboard from starting up, and I set the Yahoo! HUD key to F12, but that's basically it for my replacement strategies. Any other tips on replacing Dashboard are welcome.