Submitted by Konfabulator, the application whose concept was “borrowed” for the Mac OS X Tiger Dashboard system (and yes, we know that Konfabulator itself was inspired by many other apps, including Apple’s Desktop Accessories), has been acquired by Yahoo and is now available for free. Download it from their website.
Didn’t Sun buy Watson with plans to port it to jave and release it for free? I know this was over a year ago, does anyone know how this project is going?
Here is the source for that claim http://news.com.com/Sun+licenses+search+software+for+desktop+push/2…
This article was from June of 2004.
I have been a long time Mac user. The families first Mac ran OS 2, and the subsequent computers bought were also Mac.
The first time I saw Konfabulator, I thought to myself, all that really is is a redesign of Desktop Accessories. But they look neater and have more functionality.
I really wouldn’t say that they “borrowed” the idea from Konfabulator, but saw that Desktop Accessories could be popular finally.
I know, I know, this has been beaten to death.
Linux version some day? hopely.
Have you seen Superkaramba? http://www.superkaramba.com/
Due to be intergrated into KDE 3.5 and then massively integrated with other functionality for the Plasma project of KDE 4.
There’s a Python app set that does the same thing… Can’t think of the name of it off the top of my head, though
Gdesklets
Is nice, but I’d feel forced to use KDE or KDE libraries, and since I don’t use KDE, I’d like something like this ported to Linux.
Installed it on XP, launched a couple of widgets I downloaded and…and..nothing. That thing hanged and cannot be killed by the task manager….Bad, very bad.
I had a similar experience, two of the widgets worked the way I had expected (CPU and Memory monitors), the rest were either unresponsive (locked solid) or didn’t show up at all. I wasn’t very impressed.
This is only free as in beer but not free as in Freedom.
But you’d like to be forced to use some Apple libs or something else anyway?
I personally like Stardock’s DesktopX better. It’s not free as in freedom or beer. It’s been around since 1999. http://www.stardock.com
Some other options are:
Kapsules: http://kapsules.shellscape.org/
Samurize: http://www.samurize.com
Sysmetrix: http://www.xymantix.com/sysmetrix/
I’ve wanted to play with this for a while. I’m glad they made it free – it rocks!
free as in price, but sadley not as in freedom
Boo hoo. Should I call the whaaambulance for you?
I dloaded it right after the annoucement and so far it works great
Free as in price is good enough for me. That’s why I like GNU/Linux!
All I can say about Konfabulator and the other clones they all cool to use.
But they are only as good as the widgets they have to plug in. If only I could find ONE that has an App launcher widget that does what “Launchit Now” app launcher does I would be sold.
But Konfab being free and in the public eye, more developers will come and the QC on widgets will go up.
nice idea, but usability sucks.
it feels like an add-on software and does not integrate well into windows. the menus reminds you always that there is an engine running some widgets (which is in fact true, but this should not be the stuff the user should think about).
konfabulator widget also sometimes dissapear (don’t know why) or stay on top of active windows.