I recently recompiled and released DashSaver as a Universal Binary. It now will run fine on Intel and PowerPC computers.

Go give it a download. There are still two major feature requests:

1. Secure screensaver - when ‘Ask for password on wake’ is turned on, it will hide the dashboard
2. Dual Screens - the semi-transparent, colored background under DashSaver won’t show up on the second monitor

You can also catch a great audio review of DashSaver over at the MacReview Cast (mp3, it’s at the beginning, the first reviewed freeware app)

Expect more features coming up soon.

KDE, a desktop environment for Linux will support the HTML Canvas element in the next release (KDE 4). What does this mean to you, the user? The KDE Team’s goal is to run Apple Dashboard Widgets on Linux!

Widgets themselves are nothing special. Having developed one and dug through, modified, and working on more, they are just a collection of HTML and Javascript that happens to show up very nicely in a big dynamic webpage called Dashboard

This will be nice since currently only KonfabulatorYahoo! Widgets are cross-platform.

Since remote access via the IndigoWidget was such a popular feature - and not everyone is a programmer, I have moved setting remote control via the IndigoWidget as a preference on the backside of the widget.

You can download the new version from the software page. There is also an included Readme that discusses setting up your widget over to work over the internet back to your house or office.

I hope you enjoy!

troglogdyte speak

For those interested, coding up preferences for a Dashboard widget are actually impressively straight-forward and easy.

The only two lines of code that are special are the following which get and set the preference for the widget:

    var IndigoServerIP  = widget.preferenceForKey("serverIP");
    if(IndigoServerIP  != '')
        getObj("serverIP").value = IndigoServerIP;  

    widget.setPreferenceForKey(getObj("serverIP").value, "serverIP");

Assumedly these are stored by the name of the widget (e.g. com.highearthorbit.widget.Indigo).

IndigoWidget is a Dashboard widget for controlling Indigo Home Automation software.

Home automation is great. Perhaps not necessary (ok, definitely not necessary) but I’ve always gotten a big kick out of writing software that makes things in the world turn on, move, shake, blow up, or otherwise do something real. It’s like magic to me, even when I wrote the code and understand all (most) of the physics behind it.

Now you can control your lamp sitting on your desk just by hitting F12 and then flipping the switch or sliding the slider! Well, ok, better example - turn off all the lights outside before you go to bed. Or, get that fresh pot of coffee brewing, straight from your dashboard!
The project is free of charge, and open-source (well, like most widgets - but this is actually open-source licensed). So have a go!