Been looking for a way to get the 'peanut butter jelly time' guy onto Facebook? Look no longer.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Amnesty Hypercube, which is probably the best name I've seen this year, has a new Facebook app that's pretty handy if you're a user of their desktop application. Like its other "Amnesty" services, the new app from the folks at Mesa Dynamics takes pretty much any widget code you can throw at it, and runs it in Facebook. In turn, it syncs up with Amnesty's desktop widget app, meaning any widgets you add at home will be available without having to re-add them.
There are several reasons why this is useful. One is for the widgets you enjoy using on your iGoogle page, or OS X Dashboard can now be viewed right in Facebook instead. If you're the kind of person who spends a lot of time there, this might beat keeping an extra browser tab open. This also takes an extra step out of managing one of your Facebook apps, which is especially helpful if you've got quite a few.
The only bummer here is the interface which relegates each widget to its own mini tab in Facebook, meaning you can't view all of them at once like you can with other widget services. You also can't stick them on your profile, which could arguably be a good thing considering how crowded people's profiles have become. What I was really hoping for with this service, was a way to take any widget code and stick it on your profile similar to what you can do with MySpace, although in a more user friendly fashion, and without the need to add a new Facebook application every time. I'm not saying the idea here isn't well-founded, but if you're looking for straight up widgets, you're probably better off using a bona fide widget aggregation site than surfing a bunch of tabs.
- The pirate name generator, which will tell you exactly what your name would be if you decided to become a pirate. And in case you were wondering, it's not your middle name and the name of your first pet put together.
- Pirate translator OS X Dashboard widget. Today might be the holiday, but there are still 364 other days to speak like a pirate. Make use of them by keeping this handy widget in your Dashboard repertoire.
- The Sea Pirates Flash game. If you've ever played Zelda, you'll know the importance of sailing a ship around while trying to avoid oceanic peril. This game involves pillaging local islands at whim. It's up to you and the wind to make your way through the ocean while staying alive. You get bonus points for boarding enemy pirate ships and digging up buried treasure, too.
Anyone find any other fun pirate day Easter eggs on their favorite sites? Share 'em in the TalkBack.
In case you hadn't noticed, today is "International Talk Like a Pirate Day," which means it's socially acceptable to start speaking in tongues to your friends, family, and coworkers without them being able to roll their eyes as much as they usually do. It's also a time to check out Flickr, who has managed to translate the entirety of the site to pirate-speak. To toggle this option, just go down to the bottom of the page and select "Arrr!" as the language. Flickr's logo changes, along with all the menus, greeting messages, and of course, references to your groups and contacts which are now referred to as your "crew" and "mateys."
To a quick-and-dirty version of this for any site, you can also run any old URL through the Pirate-Speak Generator, which will turn your "my's" into "me's" and generally turn all instances of proper English into the language of ship-born scallywags.
Find Flickr's secret pirate mode by picking 'Arrr!' from the language selection.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Other pirate resources:
Amnesty Hypercube is a small application for Windows XP, Vista, and Mac OS X that will help you pull bits of Web content to use as widgets. These widgets can be brought up or dismissed ad hoc, or added to your desktop as a permanent fixture. Besides its cool name (second only to flux capacitor), the service is not so different from many existing widget platforms, like Yahoo Widgets, OS X's Dashboard, or the Windows Vista sidebar. Yet the company is taking a slightly different approach, one a little closer to Yourminis, which uses Adobe Integrated Runtime to run widgets on your desktop.
The application has a built-in directory of widget sites, which acts as a mini-Web browser to take you to places such as Finetune, last.fm, and eBay's eBay To Go widget maker. Once you've found embed code on a site's original page, copying the code to your clipboard will automatically turn it into a desktop widget. Of course, you could accomplish something similar using Mesa Dynamics' other tool--Amnesty Generator, which will convert all sorts of Web widget code into widget-friendly code for other platforms.
One nice feature on the Mac and Vista version is that you can "push" a Hypercube widget to OS X's dashboard or the Vista sidebar with two clicks. Also neat is its multiwidget desktop functionality (hence the cube name), which lets you organize your widgets on several virtual desktops. You can add more widgets and switch between them from the drop-down menu that installs itself on your system toolbar. It's a little bit like the upcoming Spaces feature in OS X Leopard, but not nearly as flashy.
The only real snag I ran into using the application was surfing through the widget directory. Since it's a miniaturized browser, pages are often cropped below their native size, unless you are using a wide-screen display or are running your computer at a high resolution. This means there's a lot more scrolling both up and down, as well as side to side, if you're on a laptop or small screen. I'd also like to see the service add a right-click contextual menu to let you create a widget from any embed code you run into while browsing on your regular browser. Currently, you have to copy and paste code into a preferences box on the application.
Mesa Dynamics is planning to add a few more features to the beta release, including sharable cubes (similar to the publicly shared page directories on single-page aggregators), cube customizations such as backgrounds and color schemes, and a tool to push a widget collection to Apple's iPhone.
Grab widgets from all over the Web and put them on your desktop. If you're a Mac or Vista user, you can also push widgets to Dashboard or the sidebar to use the native widget tools.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
There are a lot of widgets out there. So many, in fact, that sorting through them can be absolutely daunting. Joining the fray of sites that attempt to solve this problem is Widgipedia, a site that catalogs and hosts widgets, both Web-based and downloads. We've covered competitor Widgetbox several times, and the two sites are quite similar. Where Widgipedia differs is in mixing up widgets that run on different platforms: those that run right in your browser and ones you download for various engines such as Mac OS X's Dashboard and Yahoo Widgets. The result is a diverse listing that's fun to explore and play around with.
To sort through all the entries, Widgipedia employs tags instead of categories. This ends up working out pretty well for searching, as long as widgets have been tagged correctly. I still prefer Widgetbox's organization structure with its tags and nine comprehensive categories, which is a little more user friendly. As the site grows, there definitely needs to be some categorization.
(Credit:
CNET Networks)
For budding widget designers, there's a dedicated section of widget-creation resources complete with step-by-step how-tos and links to helpful walk-throughs. All the information is relegated to the forums, but there's plenty in there to get a newbie going.
Widgipedia is a great place to browse for new widgets. The site is fairly young, but it already has a pretty diverse collection of neat widgets. If you're a widget developer looking to keep track of what's happening to your widgets, you're likely better off using Widgetbox for its metrics service. If you're just looking to spice up your social-networking profile or desktop widget collection, Widgipedia is definitely worth bookmarking.
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