These days, there are countless websites that will let you create a webpage in mere minutes, without any knowledge of HTML whatsoever. We’d covered all sorts of websites and tools that you can use for this, like the four web design tools I wrote about, or other tools like OnePager or Zooloo. One of the fastest and quickest tools that I previously covered was Google Sites.

Fabricating Your Own Useful Dashboard

After using Google Sites for a while, I discovered some additional cool ways that it is integrated with other Google tools. That integration makes it a very powerful and easy way to put together your own personal information dashboard in no time.

To build your own person data/information dashboard, start by going to Google Sites and creating a site of your own. Give it a unique name, but at the bottom of the page, make sure to check off “Only people I specify” to make the site a private one.

This is important, because some of the information that you’re going to bring into the page may include personal details or statistics that are only for your information. This might include information you don’t want the public to see, like the Analytics data from your website, or the RSS streams you’re following to come up with new ideas to write about.

On the main page of your new Google site, click the “Edit” button at the top of the window.

This puts the page in edit mode. What many people may not realize is that there are a bunch of premade gadgets and widgets that can help you make a very dynamic website with very little effort. You can see those by clicking on the “Insert” menu item.

Then, click on “More gadgets…” to view the Google Gadgets database.

There are tons of really useful, high-quality gadgets listed in here. But, don’t get me wrong, there’s also a lot of junk.  Try to stick to the “Featured” category for the highest quality gadgets.

Embed RSS Streams To Your Page

One of the ones that I find to be the most useful is the “Google RSS” feed gadget. Choose that gadget, and then you’ll get to the Properties page.

This is where you can integrate an RSS stream widget onto the site that is tailor-made to provide you with a collection of information tailored specifically to what you want to see. How do you do this when there’s only one RSS feed URL field?

Easy, check out RSSMix, and use it to combine as many different RSS streams from around the net as you like into one core stream that you can embed on your own personal information page. Depending on the type of dashboard information page you’re trying to build, this stream can be a collection of whatever specific information that applies to the purpose of the dashboard. Is it your own finance dashboard? Collect relevant RSS streams from around the web and display that on this page.

Display Spreadsheet Data In Graph Form

The other really cool Gadget that you’ll see in the Insert menu is if you click on “Chart” rather than “More Gadgets“. The Chart gadget is integrated right into Google Docs. You can import any spreadsheet of data in your Google Docs account to create graphs of that data right on your new dashboard.

All I did to create this particular chart is export my Google Analytics website data to a CSV file (you can do this from inside Analytics), and then stored that CSV file in my Google Docs account. This allows Google Sites to see that data and import it into graph format.

Once you’re done laying out the data in the way that you want it to display in the graph, just click okay and now the graph is updated on your page. Pretty cool huh?

Display Dynamic Calendars On Your Dashboard

Another useful gadget in the “Insert” menu is the Calendar tool. This lets you insert any of your personal Google Calendars into your Google Site page. If you think about it, having a calendar embedded on a web page often takes a bit of work, because you need to use embed code to pull data from some calendar stored on another site, or a calendar app installed on your own server, in order to have a dynamic calendar.

But with Google Sites, it’s completely seamless.

Choose your calendar, click “Select” and you’re done. If you choose a two column layout for your page, you can easily lay out these gadgets side by side on the page.

Once you’re done integrating your Google services and embedding various gadgets onto your Google Sites page, save it and then check out how cool your new, dynamic webpage looks.

This is a lot like other dashboard pages like Netvibes, but it is more tightly integrated with your Google services. I’ve noticed that the gadgets here seem to work better and update faster than when you try to embed your Google information into a page like Netvibes. It’s also nice to quickly import docs, spreadsheets and charts right from Google Docs with just the click of a button.

If you’ve put off trying Google Sites, I highly recommend revisiting it, and trying out all of the cool integration tools that you’ll find in the “Insert” menu. You may be surprised just how dynamic and useful a dashboard page you can create for yourself.

Of course it’s with Google and it is hard not to trust in them after all they do to honor your privacy. Another such attempt by Google is the new Google Dashboard that makes you feel a little bit safer about keeping the majority of your virtual life on their servers.

Here’s what Google Dashboard is all about:

The Google Dashboard gives you quick access to all kinds of information that Google knows about you. Accessible here, it requires you to re enter your password even if you are logged into your Google Account, because the Dashboard contains all kinds of information about you. Once you log in, a summary of the services you use and what Google knows about you through those services is presented.

The Dashboard tracks a number of Google Offerings including your profile data, web history, Gmail, Docs, Talk, Reader, Orkut, Calendar, Picasa, Youtube, Blogger, iGoogle, Contacts, Friend Connect, Voice, Custom Search engines, Mobile Sync, Health, Alerts and Tasks.

Other offerings like Analytics, App Engine, Bookmarks, Groups, Sites, Notebook, Page Creator, Webmaster tools and the latest addition Google Wave are not yet included in Google Dashboard.

Dashboard lets you know which data is private – that is visible to only you (and Google) and which is public – meaning you, your contacts or anyone can see those details (depending upon the context). Such shared and public items are marked with an icon and details are presented wherever applicable.

In addition to personal information, Dashboard also provides quick access to settings for any particular service you use. So you can easily change or share/unshare information from the Dashboard. Alongside are listed the various privacy policies of each letting you know how your personal information is stored and used.

The Google Dashboard is not the first effort from Google’s side to give you greater control over your personal information and data. There is also an Ads preference manager that addresses similar issues as well. To add on to that, Google has a special Data Liberation Front, a team that caters to, vaguely similar if not exactly, the same issues.

It is all about making it easy for users to switch. As an example you may love Google Docs right now, let’s say you don’t like it two years on, but you have a number of documents that are now sitting on Google’s servers. Ideally you should not be tied down into using Google docs just because you have your data on there. So Google Docs also offers an export as zip feature, that lets you export all your documents in one go.

Google is certainly leading the efforts in empowering users with an ability to have a greater say as to who can view their information and data and what can be done with it. Purists may find that it is a little too less a little too late and that Google can easily hide what they don’t want you to see. That they are giving you glasses to look through, but what if the glasses only show the brighter picture?

It would be interesting to know what you think of the issue. No doubt Google makes great products that makes us use them, but are we putting too much information about ourselves in their hands? Let us know your thoughts.

Zooloo consists of the following components that you can use to design your own portal website for free:

• zSocial: Social networking with Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter with single status update across all networks
• Dashboard: Personalized dashboard for news, photos, events, email, etc.
• Site Creator: Website and blog builder with themes and widgets
• Privacy Manager: Control who sees which parts of your website
• Photos/Videos: Online photo organizer and video library
• Calendar: Calendar, address book, reminders and to-do lists
• Entertainment & Shopping: Customized online entertainment for music, movies, etc. and favorite shopping sites

Homepage with Social Networking

The homepage has a search box at the top, zStatus and zSocial on the main page, and widgets on the right to upload photos, access email, calendar and your blog.

zStatus is a status update box from where you can update your status across Zooloo, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. Below that is zSocial, where you can interact with these social networks. Clicking the tab each network shows relevant sub-headings: for example, Facebook lets you choose between News Feed, Status Updates, Photos, Wall & Friends.

You can choose the background of your home page from several themes.

Your Dashboard

You pick and choose widgets to create your personalized dashboard. The dashboard is organized with tabs at the top, so you can create multiple tabs for different areas of interest. Clicking Add Widgets opens up a gallery of widgets that you can drag and drop to any tab on your dashboard. Widgets that need access to your login or profile need to be customized from the Options button on that widget.

The widget gallery is quite impressive ““ some of the popular types include:

• Social Tools ““ Email, Social Networks, Photo-sharing, etc.
• News Feeds ““ CNN, New York Times, etc.
• Entertainment ““ Last.fm, iTunes Media

You can see the list of widgets available in Zooloo here. From within your dashboard, you can listen to podcasts and watch videos without leaving your site. You can rearrange widgets with drag and drop and customize the theme. Your dashboard is private, so nobody else sees it at any time.

Build Your Zooloo Website

With a free Zooloo account, you get a yourname.zooloo.com website for free. Your website includes profile, photo, video, graffiti, blog, and three custom pages. With a $30 annual subscription for Zooloo Plus, you can use it with your own domain name and some extras.

The zCreator website builder is very easy to use. You can choose from different layouts and themes for your website. You add content placeholders by drag and drop and fill them with the text and images to build your website.

Each page of your website is private by default. You can choose to share individual pages, photo albums, and videos publicly, or with specific friends on Zooloo. The privacy settings are easy to use and offer granular control over who sees what on your website.

Blogging and Graffiti

Zooloo also offers a simple interface to add a blog to your website. The blogging service supports categories, comments, and photos/videos. You can also import your blog from Blogger.

Graffiti is Zooloo’s social bookmarking or clipping service. Using a bookmarklet from any browser, you can quickly clip a link, photo, or video on your Graffiti page. Graffiti posts also have comments so you can comment on your friends Graffiti items.

More About Zooloo

Zooloo is an easy-to-use, attractive option for non-geeks to have their own website and a central place for social networking and infotainment. The owners of the site say that they are not competing with established social networks like Facebook, but complementing them. There are already over 20,000 users of Zooloo from each state in the US and 76 countries. Users are buying from within their shopping malls inside Zooloo using PayPal. There are plans for an iPhone application as well.

Will you try out Zooloo or recommend it to someone? Do you prefer any other free website/dashboard service? Let us know in the comments!

However, after finishing the previous article on How To Place Your Widgets On The Desktop, I had a thought about Widget games and lured myself into searching and downloading a bunch of them.

Here is the short list of what I found among the hundreds (or thousands) widget games available out there.

1. SudokuWidget

In this variation of the classic number puzzle game, you’ll have random puzzles with four different levels of difficulty. You also have the option to reveal an incorrect answer, use “pencil” marks for temporary numbers, time the games so you can see how much better (or worse) you are getting, show high scores, use blank puzzles and many more. All I can say is, spare a big chunk of your time to enjoy this one.

2. Mars Explorer

At first, I thought that this one was not a Dashboard game. Widgets, to me, are simple mini-applications with a certain function. But the size and the complexity of Mars Explorer go beyond that.

The description of the game goes like this: Ascend massive volcanoes, race atop elevated plateaus, splash through lava seas, and execute aerobatic stunts using deployable wings while playing laser tag with your friends over the internet!

What more can you ask?

3. Treshold

This one is a multi-dimensional maze program. A classic puzzle with increasing levels of difficulty: once you have mastered the two-dimensional mazes you may progress to three-dimensional mazes and so on, up to six dimensions.

Six dimension? At the time of writing, I can’t even get pass three dimension.

4. Space Fighters and Asteroids

For those who love spaceship adventures, why not try these two widgets? Both are variations of the classic “Asteroids” game. Just remember not to destroy your keyboard.

5. Bubble Bazinga

Your job is simple: group bubbles with similar colors together and get a score as high as you can. But don’t be fooled by the simplicity of the rule, this one is very, very addictive.

6. Chrysalis-B

Want to know how good you are in creating a new world? Maybe you’ll get a clue by playing this widget game.

Chrysalis-B is a real-time causal pace evolution widget/game. You start with nothing but plants and dirt within a glass chamber. By figuring out the right temperature that promotes growth/evolution, you must guide an unknown species through several stages of evolution until it hopefully evolve into the Elders.

7.What’s Different

Do you have a good eye? Try to spot the differences between the two cartoon images. This game reminds me of my kindegarten years. Yet, doing it again now still feels fun.

8. 3D Crashdrive

If you love to drive like crazy, get crazy with this one. The goal of 3D Crashdrive is simple: have fun. It is a freeroam race/stunt game. You can play around on your own, but better yet: you can also play it in multiplayer mode. You can play together with friends or random players from all around the world and compare your records and score.

9. Missile Command

A remake of the classic arcade game. I played this back in the 80′s on the big machine with a large ball to control the anti-missile circle. This game is also featured in one of the episodes of Chuck. Even though much smaller in size, this widget version isn’t any easier than the original version. At least, not to me.

10. Crate mania

There are many first-person shooter multiplayer games out there. To stand out among the masses, one must have something special. Crate Mania twists the common scenario a little by giving players the ability to disguise themselves as crates.

What do you think about these widget games? Do you know other fun widget games? Share using the comment below.

Users can add or remove widgets to fit their personal preferences. There are already thousands widgets available today on Apple’s Dashboard download page, and who knows how many more are there scattered all over the internet. Users can even create their own widgets.

Some widgets are the “˜smaller versions’ of full-featured applications although not all are. That doesn’t mean these widgets are below the quality of the “real applications”. Many widgets are even so good (like these ones) that they should’ve been made available as stand-alone applications.

Imagine using a currency convertor widget like this one, to convert a whole list of different currencies. You’ll probably have to switch between Dashboard and your desktop a million times.

It turns out that it’s possible to detach widgets from the Dashboard and make them available as individual applications. Here is the way to do that.


Enable Developer Mode
First thing to do is to put the Dashboard in the Developer Mode. You can do that by launching Terminal (Applications –> Utilities –> Terminal) and typing in the following command:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES

Hit Enter or Return.

To avoid mistakes, I suggest you just copy and paste the command.

The second step is to restart the Dashboard. But instead of logging out and logging in, type in another command in the Terminal:

killall Dock

And again, hit Enter or Return.

Drag the Widgets out and back in
Now you can press the keyboard shortcut assigned to show and hide the Dashboard. The default key would be F12 (or in some keyboard F4). You can change the settings by going to System Preferences → Expose & Spaces.

After the Dashboard appears, drag the widget that you want to detach. While still dragging, press the keyboard shortcut again. The Dashboard will disappear but the widget will stay. You can move it around the desktop and it will always stay above other applications.

You can drag as many widgets as you want out of the Dashboard and into the desktop by repeating the above process.

You can also drag the widgets back into the Dashboard by reversing the process: drag a widget on the desktop; and while still dragging, press the keyboard shortcut. Drop the widget back on the Dashboard, and press the shortcut key to go back to the desktop.

Disable the Developer Mode
If later on you decide to disable the Developer Mode, you can do so by typing in this command:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode NO

Hit Enter or Return, then continue with this command:

killall Dock

And hit Enter or Return.

Other methods
Using the Terminal commands is not the only way to detach widgets from the Dashboard. You can also use free widget called DashIt or a paid app called Amnesty Singles.

Please note that if you’ve moved the widgets to the desktop then disable the Dashboard, for example by using MainMenu, the widgets will disappear along with the Dashboard.

If you know other methods to pull widgets out of Dashboard, please share using the comment below.

Your Mac is also the kind of machine which can go on fine for ages without the need for rebooting. My Mac’s last reboot was three weeks ago when I installed a few software updates. So, the maintenance arrangement seems logical.

But if you are the kind of person who can’t leave the machine without turning it off, or if your machine is in the office where the rules require you to turn it off every time you leave it, your Mac might have missed several maintenance schedules, and the cumulative effects could cause several glitches.

In the rare cases where the automatic maintenance schedule fails, you are advised to do it manually. However, one of the alternative applications that can help you is MainMenu.

Upon installation, this small app ““ about 1.4MB in size – will reside in your menubar above next to the clock and other tools like Bluetooth and Airport status. From this menubar icon, you can access MainMenu’s menus.

The first thing you would want to do is to go to the “Preferences”

and choose “General”. Make sure that the “Start MainMenu automatically when I log in” box is checked. This will make sure that it will always be available for you to use.

You can choose what kind of menubar icon you want to use from the “Appearance” tab.

The “Log Window” tab gives you options to display the log window and set the hotkey.

“Batch Tasks” might be the most important tab of all. Here you can choose what tasks need to be done when you choose “Execute Batch Task” (Command + R).

There are two main groups here: the tasks that need no restart after executed and the tasks that do. But it seems the developer has saved the latter group for the next version of the app.

For me, I would check all of the boxes in the Batch Tasks except for the “Clear All Browser History” and “Empty All Browser Caches”.

Another tabs are “Updates” and “Registration”. Note: no registration is needed for version 1.x.

MainMenu’s Menus

Now let us see the menus.

For those who don’t want to be bothered by the little things, just pick “Execute Batch Task” (Command + R).

The “Maintenance Scripts” I mentioned ““ that run in the middle of the night ““ are available at the top. There are the “Daily”, “Weekly” and “Monthly” scripts, but to make life easier, choose “All Scripts” to run.

Other menus are: “Disk Utility”, “Rebuild”, “Cleaning”, “Finder” and “Others”; each with their own sets of tasks that you can explore and choose.

But the one that I find most useful is the “Disable Dashboard” task from the “Others” menu, as I almost never use Dashboard and its widgets.

I could use the extra power gained from disabling Dashboard to other “heavy” activities such as composing my next hit with Garageband or editing my vacation videos in iMovie.

Do you have any other favorite utility tool? Share your experiences using the comment section below.

It’s one of these addictive little tools that I just can’t stop playing around with, and I have been using it for over two years.

KlipFolio sits on your desktop. It can float freely or dock to either side and work as a sidebar. It can be as large or small, as flashy or unobtrusive as you want it to be. It’s fully customizable. That’s its beauty.

What can KlipFolio do for you?

It could be used as a tiny desktop feed reader, but that’s not really how it works and as such it may not be very convenient. As you may realize, KlipFolio is more sophisticated than a simple, text based feed reader, yet it can not really replace your feed reader. You can use KlipFolio to track eBay auctions, follow YouTube video additions, see what’s up on MUO, keep a To Do List, follow the news or always know what’s hot on Digg.

Reading Klips is simple, no matter how small it is. When you scroll over a Klip it will automatically expand, and when you scroll over the entries, a preview window with more details will appear. To get the full story however, you will still need to load it in a browser, and that’s the drawback compared to a dedicated feed reader. A great advantage of course is its versatility and style.

I want more!

You should start with adding some more Klips that interest you. Visit the KlipFolio website and browse what they have. Once you find something, click the Add Klip link and it will automatically attach to your collection. To add RSS Feeds you first need to get the Feed URL, then click on the Feed symbol in the KlipFolio toolbar, eventually paste the URL, click Add Feed and you’re done. You can add multiple feeds to a single Klip, for example add all MUO feeds to one Klip and some other blogs feeds to another. To remove a Klip, right-click on it or click the tool symbol and go to >Manage Klip >Delete.

How can I customize it?

It’s easy as pie! You can drag&drop your Klips around and resize them by holding down the bottom right corner. Through the tool symbol that sits in the title of each Klip, you can edit its display settings or further customize each Klip. If you’re in for some serious customization, right-click the KlipFolio toolbar or the tab symbol in the top left, and choose >Options. Here you can change the settings of single Klips, select a skin, change KlipFolio’s Transparency, edit its text font and size, and more.

It’s taking up too much space!

The number of Klips can easily get out of hand, even when you resize them to tiny buttons. Running it as a floating window may subsequently become inefficient. As mentioned above you can run KlipFolio as a sidebar. With Auto-Hide enabled it will not take up any screen space at all. Drag the bulk of Klips to the top, bottom or side of the screen and it will dock. Next go to >Layout and check >Auto-Hide to make it vanish.

If you like you can even run two sidebars or a floating window and a sidebar or two floating windows at the same time. Start with dragging out one Klip and see how it suddenly has its own toolbar (possibly minimized), then proceed to add Klips to it as you like. The cool part is that even when you re-arrange and re-size the Klips in a docked sidebar, it will jump right back to its previous order when you undock it. You see, the tool is very versatile indeed.

Have you tried KlipFolio? What do you think? What are your favorite Klips? Please share!

If you’ve always wanted to look up another language besides English, you have several options:

• Add additional language plugins to Dictionary.app
• Use an online dictionary
• Use a program which acts as a desktop interface for an online dictionary
• Get a separate translation application

The first option (plugins) is obviously the most convenient for use because then you would get your foreign translations with the hotkey even while using other applications; but it is difficult to find these plugins for Dictionary. There are some, of course; and I have listed them below. You could use DictUnifier to make your own plugin by converting StarDict dictionary files into the format which Dictionary.app recognizes (see tutorial here – external link) but it is a tricky procedure and is not recommended for the faint of hearts.

Otherwise, the next three options are just as good although using an online dictionary will require you to be connected to the internet, obviously.

Here are some translation tools which I have found and I hope they prove to be useful to you. All of them translate from the foreign language to English. They are Dictionary.app plugins unless stated otherwise. Clicking on the link will download the application.

Arabic

Arabic Dictionary (8.8MB ZIP)
Alqamoos Almuheet Arabic-Arabic Dictionary (5.8MB DMG)

Chinese

CEDICT (39.1MB ZIP)
Atomix Dojam [Independant Application] (13.7MB DMG)
Yazi [Independent Application] (2.1MB ZIP)

Croatian

Mini Dictionary [Dashboard Widget] (3.3MB ZIP)

Danish

Danish-English Dictionary [Independent Application] (3.9MB DMG)

Dutch

Van Dale [Dashboard Widget] (49KB ZIP)

French

Mac Translate [Desktop Interface] (944KB ZIP)

German

BeoLingus German-English (183MB DMG)
OpenThesaurus German (21.6MB DMG)
dict.cc Dictionary Plugin (188MB ZIP)
LEO Dictionary [Dashboard Widget] (25KB ZIP)
Mac Translate [Desktop Interface] (944KB ZIP)

Hebrew

Limon [Independent Application] (373KB ZIP)

Hungarian

SwiftTranslate [Independent Application] (12.5MB ZIP)

Italian

De Mauro [Dashboard Widget] (49KB ZIP)
Mac Translate [Desktop Interface] (944KB ZIP)

Latin

WORDS Latin Dictionary [Independent Application] (14.3MB DMG)

Japanese

Mac Translate [Desktop Interface] (944KB ZIP)
*OS X’s Dictionary has already got built-in support for Japanese! To turn this option on, go to the preferences in Dictionary and check the Japanese dictionaries you need.

Polish

Polish-English Dictionary [Dashboard Widget] (84KB ZIP)

Spanish

Mac Translate [Desktop Interface] (944KB ZIP)

Swedish

Lexikon [Desktop Interface] (99KB ZIP)

Thai

Thai Dictionary (40MB ZIP)

Alternatively, you could use StarDict, they have a huge selection of dictionaries but the interface is a little painful to the eyes. Otherwise, TranslateIt! is a very good translation application which is shareware (you can try it for 20 days to see how it is) – if you are trying to translate Russian, this is the tool you need.

How do you get your translations? Do you use any of the applications listed above? How do you find them? Are there any better ones which I should have listed? Let me know in the comments!

(By) Jackson Chung is a full-time medical student attempting to perform a juggling act with relationship, studies and his future.