Tag Archives: dashboard

Adding an RSS feed to your iGoogle page

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I’ve been teaching social media fundamentals in the UBC  and Emily Carr University continuing studies programs for nearly two years now. Early on in every course, I show students how to use iGoogle (and similar services) into a social media dashboard, displaying the latest results from online searches, must-read blogs and other sources.

The key to it all is the process of turning a feed into an iGoogle widget. (I know: Google calls them gadgets. Can’t we all just get along?) And this year, it finally dawned on me that it might be handy to have a video reference my students can fall back on in case my in-class demo wasn’t quite as memorable as I’d hoped.

And so, in case it’s useful to you…

 

(And if these can be helpful in your own trainings, feel free to use them.)

A lorem ipsum generator for the 21st century

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Corporate Ipsum widget for OS X Dashboard

Oh, very nice: a handy little device for whipping up reams of dummy copy at the click of a button. And not just your basic lorem ipsum greek text, either (although that’s an option). This puppy happily spits out a screed of utterly baffling corporatespeak for your next annual report design job. Here’s an example:

Competently expedite standardized services vis-a-vis multifunctional interfaces. Dramatically communicate distributed ideas whereas exceptional solutions. Competently provide access to state of the art action items after business technology.

Rapidiously negotiate multifunctional leadership through scalable manufactured products. Credibly leverage existing optimal total linkage before scalable meta-services. Authoritatively formulate enterprise leadership for value-added portals.

Appropriately facilitate 24/7 mindshare rather than covalent results. Proactively extend flexible portals via inexpensive outsourcing. Compellingly evisculate pandemic web services and virtual ideas.

Globally leverage existing standards compliant mindshare for pandemic infomediaries. Objectively brand cooperative leadership skills without just in time niche markets. Holisticly leverage existing equity invested web-readiness without mission-critical growth strategies.

Authoritatively impact resource maximizing processes whereas sustainable opportunities. Intrinsicly reconceptualize maintainable experiences without cooperative value.

Authoritatively impact resource maximizing processes? I swoon.

Konfabulator’s revenge: tweaking the Tiger

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They say living well is the best revenge. Others say the hell with that: revenge is the best revenge. A little software company may be about to prove both points of view right.

A lot of Mac users have a warm place in their hearts for Konfabulator, a program that allows you to run much smaller programs called widgets.

Widgets can do handy things like display a live weather forecast, give you a pop-up medication reference and tell you whether you’ve won the lottery. (That’s a piece of code even I could write: open a window and display the word “Nope”. It would work at least 99.99% of the time.)

Then Apple announced that an upcoming revision of its operating system would have something very much like Konfabulator built into it. One of the biggest selling points of OS X 10.4, dubbed “Tiger”, is Dashboard, which offers, yes, widgets that can do things like display the weather, pop up reference windows and… you get the picture.

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