Who here has a iBook, G4, or some other new Apple? Good, you made a good choice from the beginning, so basically, you can stop reading this post now if you’d like, because most likely, you already have some of knowledge of the below information.
So, those of you that are still reading, you most likely have some sort of IBM-based x86 system. Dell, Gateway, HP/Compaq, IBM, etc…run Windows? Hopefully XP, so keep reading…
Every wanted to spice up your desktop a little bit? You know, the main screen of Windows where the background is – that is called your desktop. Besides the cute pictures of your doggy or the not-so-bright pictures of your friend doing a keg stand from his Frat time at TKB (that’s Tappa Kegga Beer by the way – great Frat), wouldn’t you like to make your Windows XP desktop a little more, well, active? May be even a little useful besides the 452 icons and 6 sets of the same broken shortcuts? (Which leads me to another rant—those of you that have a desktop CLUTTERED with nonsense, please stop reading right here. Befriend some nice guy or girl at the local computer lab, buy him or her a subscription to Wired magazine and a 6-pack of good beer or cool-aid or whatever it is they drink, and let them explain to you the proper way to keep your Desktop uncluttered—it’s a desktop people, literally. You don’t want it messy, you want it useful. Get rid of the 4 links to your My Pictures Folder, you don’t need AOL v7.0, AOL v8.0, and AOL v9.0 super-duper verion shortcuts on the desktop, AND the AOL quicklaunch loaded in the taskbar every time you start Windows. You also sure as hell do not need anything you don’t use more than 3 times a day on your desktop. (i.e. Get rid of the shortcut to Microsoft Access. Don’t pretend you know how to use it, no one really knows how to use it. Ok, a few people do, but those people only do it because that can’t program in SQL. I can’t program in either of them, but I sure as hell can spot a liar. 😉 ….Ok, now here you go:
Here is how you spice things up a bit. Konfabulator. That’s right – it’s spelled right, and yes, you did pronounce it right. Brought to you by the people that made Yahoo!, Konfabulator is a program that organizes and runs “widgets”. Remember that marketing or business class in highschool or college where the teacher’s fake company produced “left handed widgets?” Yeah, I know, I got fooled too – I didn’t think a widget existed. Until now. (If it’s one thing you get out of this post, it’s never to listen to anything any teacher in highschool tells you.)
Konfabulator is the program, and widgets are the applications that Konfabulator uses. There are hundreds and hundreds of widgets available. Want to spice up that clock you have in the taskbar? Download one of the clock and calendar widgets and you’ll have a nice little alternative on the desktop. Do you ship a lot of packages or do you do a lot of eBay sales? It’s tough to track some of the packages you send or receive, but there are widgets that will track your packages for you with the major shipping carriers; DHL, Airborne, USPS, FedEx, and UPS. (By the way, did you hear that FedEx & UPS might merge? They’re going to call it FedUp.) It’s a joke, sorry. Anyway, there are widgets for everything – sports, entertainment, weather, as well as time, date and calender management.
Best of all, it’s all free. So check out Konfabulator, www.konfabulator.com
Widgets will run best on Windows 2000 or XP. The bigger the screen, the higher the resolution you can use, and the more widgets you can see. Your mileage may vary. (No, the graphic at the top of this article is not a screen capture of my desktop).