Besides hair sprouting where it shouldn't, if you are a truly a werewolf, how do you know if a full moon is coming?
Or even what day it is? Or who needs what from you by when? Or when Mariah Carey's new groundbreaking single is coming out?
What do you use to manage the dataflows in your busy little life?
If you haven't discovered them already, try Yahoo Widgets.
I asked supersmart interface designer, Jason Simmons of GradientLabs how he manages time. Second only to the Post-It Notes (TM) papering his desk, are the virtual dashboard gauges peppering his monitor.
Yahoo is buying up all the smart little companies out there and integrating them into it's main offering. But Yahoo Widgets are user-created and communally shared.
For Mac and PC, Yahoo offers a tidy install folder of life management widgets that allow you scan and execute simple tasks--see the realtime weather report in Zurich; control your iTunes player; browse your Outlook or iCal calendars; check off to-do list items--all through nice, bug-size controller/displayers on your desktop.
The major upside? Not having to open additional applications or execute a Google/Yahoo search in your browser. Plus, you can construct your own customized dashboard with more dials, monitors, blinkers, scrollbars and goofy geegaws than a Fox News satellite truck!
Of course, Apple being Apple, has already built all this into their operating system in the form of the Dashboard: http://www.learnstuff.com/osx-dashboard/
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