Have you ever had to monitor several items simultaneously?

Maybe you needed to time that cake in the oven or when to give your child his/her medicine next? Any which way this web site called E.ggtimer has got you covered. It’s one of a kind online count down timer that you’re likely to find very handy.

Every so often I get a few admin tasks I need to do such as run a few trace routes and monitor a log file at specific intervals. That’s all well and good until 4 other tasks come along and severely distract me. For important events my Outlook calendar will pop up and let me know it is time for my next meeting or some other sort of activity.

But now if I launch an egg timer for each item and keep them open, when it comes time to do something my window will show “Time Expired” and beep. So turn up your speakers, fire up your browser and lets see what’s what.

I can think of lots of instances where this will come in handy! Now check out how easy it is to use.

When you first get to the website this is what you will see:

So this works like a command line website. We all love the command line right?

You put your parameters into the URL. So if I need a 10 minute timer to let me know that I shouldn’t be napping because the chairman of the board is going to swing by so I can look at his laptop I would go to my favorite browser and type:

http://e.ggtimer.com/10minutes

That will give you this screen:

Very large text displaying your countdown using a flash design. When the countdown gets closer to completion the status bars will become darker. So you can be looking at the screen from clear across the room and still be able to discern what’s up!

The syntax is very simple. If you type in the URL with /10 it will be 10 seconds. Any number without a designation is taken as seconds. If you want minutes just write /10minutes. You can use Minutes, Hours, Days, Months and Years.

Can you think of some interesting uses for this web app? Maybe you use something similar ““ but better. Let us know in the comments guys!

For this is a tribute to Dashboard – Mac’s solution to Konfabulator.

I’m going to list most of the widgets I use often and some which I think may come in handy for you. Not every widget may hit the right spot for everyone, but the thing about widgets is that there are just so many of them! So if I missed your favorite one, do tell me about them in the comments.

Here we go.

1. WeatherBug Widget

I feel that this is the most essential widget and definitely a must-have on your Dashboard. WeatherBug is more informative than the regular Weather widget in the sense that it provides details about wind velocity and direction; forecasts with Highs and Lows; and links to satellite images of your country of residence. I’m sure you would like to know that it’s probably going to rain before heading out for a picnic, wouldn’t you?

2. Dashalytics

Do you have a blog with Google Analytics installed? Then you must know what I’m talking about when you have to constantly log into your Analytics account just to check how many hits you’ve had today? Dashalytics does all this for you. It will show you the total number of visits, pageviews, percentage of new visits and other general visitor overview information. It will also show you the graph you have on your Analytics Dashboard.

3. Currency Converter

Especially for those of you who travel a lot or often have to deal with foreign currencies, this is an absolute must-have! It will convert between multiple currencies at the same time and you can keep adding as many currencies as you want on the table. Also, typing * performs an inverse conversion against all other currencies. I found this widget super handy while I was travelling around Europe.

4. Punk

On the lighter side of things, I use this widget to do a little research before I go off to the movies. Type in the name of the film, it connects to IMDB‘s database and then returns with the rating of the movie. Quick and easy. I wonder how highly rated ‘Pirates of Silicon Valley‘ is. Hmm.

5. Countdownr

A simple countdown widget to help you count the days, hours, minutes and seconds until the next special event in your calendar. It allows you to set alarms and every event can recur daily, weekly, monthly or yearly. Never again forget your anniversary, your partner’s birthday or your project deadline!

6. Twigget

Is Twitter your life? Are you an online-social-networking freak? There are a lot of alternatives for a Twitter desktop application, but there’s nothing that pleases me more than simplicity. Turn this widget on, sign in, and start twittering.

7. Abracadabra

Got files or folders to hide from others? I sometimes keep some folders away from prying eyes with this widget. It’s much easier than setting up a password-protected DMG. Just drag-and-drop the files and folders you want to hide into this widget, set a password and lock it. The file you dropped in the widget will now have disappeared from the original location! To restore the file, unlock the widget and choose what you want to release from the magic hat.

Learn how to do this manually on Windows here.

8. Snooze

I love to listen to music just before I go to bed. But its a chore for me to get up to turn off my Mac in the middle of the night. After I found this widget, my nights were undisturbed and it’s so easy to use. Enter the amount of time you would like your Mac to countdown before sleeping itself and it does the rest. Of course, you could use it for other reasons, for example, setting the sleep timer to correspond to the estimated time remaining of your downloads.

There are lots more useful and cool widgets out there. Although I would love to cover all of them, it’s close to impossible, unfortunately. Tell us your favorite widgets and how/why you use them.

(By) Jackson Chung is a full-time med student attempting to perform a juggling act with relationship, studies and his future. He also manages a Mac news site, Macnifying.