The Flip Side 2.1.07

The host apologizes for his absence and talks about the release of the public beta of DashCode, a new application for developing dashboard widgets. He also mentions a prototype reference widget for querying the internet database and an iPhone widget created by Lexinc. He discusses a new Shredder widget for securely deleting files and a story about someone proposing using a customized dashboard widget. He then provides an overview of different templates in DashCode and invites listeners to watch a video demonstration on widgetshow.com. He concludes by thanking listeners and inviting them to contribute to the show. February 1st, 2007, Episode 25, Welcome to the Flipside with John Brown. Hi, and welcome back, everybody. This is John Brown. I am your host, and welcome to the Flipside. I do want to apologize for my two-month absence from the show. I have no intention of shutting the show down, and I had no intentions of Pod fading, but when you start up a new career, that career is always more demanding than your previous career. And so, as such, I have been very busy, and I hope that you all forgive me and understand my situation. Now, let's get started and jump into some really great widget news today. One of the first things that most of you already know about, but I just wanted to touch on quickly, was the release of the public beta of DashCode. DashCode is a new application for developing dashboard widgets coming in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. That'll be the non-beta version of this program. DashCode is everything you need to create a great dashboard widget. With DashCode, you can have your widget running in minutes, even if you've never written a line of code in your life. You will start your project by selecting one of the bundle templates created, a valuable widget that is ready to run and ready to be customized. The integrated workspace will have you smoothly transitioning from design to layout to editing code to debugging JavaScript, and finally, deploying your great new widget. Now, I've had some time to sit down and play around with DashCode, and as I've had this time, people have been banging down my door with emails asking me to do some step-by-step tutorials to take them through each template that's offered in DashCode, which I am going to do starting today. I will be using Snaps Pro X and will be going through the RSS widget template and working through how to customize, how to use that template, and then how to deploy a successful widget for use. So again, DashCode, you can find the link to the announcement on Apple's website in the show notes over on widgetshow.com. Another announcement that I struck as very interesting was the prototype reference widget. Now, this is a widget that somebody created to be a reference point for people wanting to create widgets that query the database on the internet. So what about its usage? Well, you might have expected it's very simple. For instance, if you are looking for documentation on an event, just type event, and it'll give you details on how to use events in your widget. You can also actually omit the query by adding dots. So you can use event.observe, and you can get the bit of code for that tag. So again, it's really simple, and there's a link to it again in the show notes. Well, as you all know, the iPhone, which was developed by Apple Technologies, will be released in June of 2007. But if you can't wait to have your own iPhone before then, why not check out the iPhone widget created by Lexinc? It's a really cool widget that looks and feels just like a regular iPhone, and also incorporates an RSS feeder and a countdown so that you can keep track of when the iPhone will be deployed. Again, iPhone widget by Lexinc. You can find a link to it in the show notes. Now, one of the coolest widgets that I've seen in a long time has just been emailed to me, and it's by a guy that we've talked to before on the show, Eben, the guy who created the Gas widget. He just created a new widget called the Shredder widget, and I'm just going to read a little bit about the Shredder widget. You're familiar with shredders around the office, those loud devices that leave mountains of finely shredded paper on their wake. Now, you can have this right in your dashboard. It features three different types of settings, low, medium, and high. The low will bypass the trash can, though this isn't a secure deletion of your files. Medium is a secure erase. This mode overwrites your shredded documents with a U.S. Department of Defense Compliance 7 pass procedure. High, virtual paper pulp. Use this setting for only the most sensitive files, though it might be slow. The 35 pass government algorithm will ensure that no data from these files is ever recovered. So, you can see how this might come in handy if you're working with sensitive files, and you do not want them to be recovered from your hard drive at all. And, you know, instead of formatting your hard drive with a 32 pass erase, you can actually just erase your files with the same form of technology right in your dashboard. So, again, that's the Shredder widget created by Evan, and you can find the link to that in the show notes. A really cute story hit my attention in DIG when I was searching for news-related items for dashboard widgets. Apparently, there was a gentleman who proposed to a young girl using his own customized dashboard widget. The dashboard widget looked like a ring box with a diamond ring inside, and it had an overlay of the question, Jennifer Christensen, will you marry me? He told her to hit F12, and the rest was history, of course. Again, it's always fun to see people using widgets in unique ways, and I feel that this was definitely one of the most unique ways I've ever seen a widget that wasn't made to be publicly distributed, but for private use. And, again, touching on dash code, these are just some of the things that people are just not realizing about widgets. Widgets can be used for churches, organizations, or just for personal use. It doesn't have to be something that's going to be distributed worldwide for personal recognition. It could be for anything. So, again, really great use. You can find a link to the full story as well as a picture of his widget in the show notes. Now, I wanted to devote some time to actually going through the dash code program. So, I've just pulled up dash code. I have it in front of me, and I'm looking at the different types of templates that we have here. I'm just going to go through the templates one by one and talk about what each one does just briefly. The first one is custom, and you can create your own custom widget. It could be a widget that you have an idea for that doesn't have a template for it. The next one is a countdown widget. The countdown widget is actually a really cool timer template which allows you to create a countdown to any certain event in the future. The RSS widget, which is what we're going to be going over today, is a really cool way to distribute your news and information through the widget. So, if you have an RSS feed or an XML feed on your website, then you can go ahead and create a widget that will distribute that news. There's a podcast widget. Now, the podcast widget obviously will let people listen to your podcast through the widget and also keep tabs on the widget, keep tabs on your podcast rather, and also let you subscribe to the podcast. A photocast template, which is next, is a template that lets you display a slideshow of shows that you have in iPhoto. So, if you have iPhoto, the newest iPhoto, create a photocast, create a widget, send out the widget to your family and friends, and they can watch your iPhoto library right in the dashboard. The Quartz Composer is a template that can customize your Quartz Composer widget, edit the included composition, and provide your own. You can use this to create something like a lava lamp or anything that uses the Quartz Composer method of drawing graphics on screen. It's also a cool way to create an animated widget. A daily feed, the daily feed template creates a widget that displays individual articles or images from an RSS source. The difference between daily feed and RSS, RSS will actually display feeds 10 at a time or 20 at a time or 30 at a time. The daily feed will just be one at a time per day. And the last one, the gauge template. This template creates a widget that monitors activities on your system, so you can gauge the different types of activities on your computer. All right, so that's a brief overview of the different templates. I'm going to click on the RSS template. I'm going to click choose, and we're going to open up the RSS template, and we're going to go through this together. What I'm going to do at this juncture is instead of continue with audio, I'm going to switch to video at this point. And we are going to watch the demonstration from this point further because there's going to be a lot of technical jargon that a lot of people may not follow without having some video. So with that being said, we're going to end today's podcast and just head over to widgetshow.com and you can find the video and you can continue watching the video from there. And I hope you guys enjoyed and find it informative. Like I said, I had lots of people emailing me and asking me about how to do this, so I'm just providing this as a service to those people. All right, well, that's going to do it today. Thanks for listening to the show. I've enjoyed being back with you and I hope to be back soon. If you have a widget that you would like reviewed on the show, why not send it in? You can send that to widgetshow.com and we'll say something about your widget and we'll promote it for you. Want to contribute to the show? Review any of the products that we've reviewed here on the show and send your reviews to widgetshow.com. You can also call our hotline at 206-333-0417. That's 206-333-0417. Leave a message and we'll include it into the podcast. We are looking for, again, staff writers. So if you're interested in writing articles for our show blog, please email us at widgetshow at gmail.com. And again, of course, check out the show forum. It's been a long time since people have posted, but I really want to get back to the groove of asking questions and seeking support from the people on the forum. I've done a really good job of reducing spam and getting rid of unwanted members who are just filling up the boards with junk. Again, you can find that at forum.widgetshow.com. Thank you all for downloading and listening, and I'll catch you all next time on the flip side. Bye.