Google Desktop for Mac adds support for Google Gadgets
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Nov 28, 2007 at 12:14pm
Google Desktop for the Mac now also includes support for Google Gadgets, mini applications with dynamic content. Mac users can now run Google Gadgets side by side with Apple Widgets in Dashboard and have the same gadgets on their Mac, iGoogle page and Google Desktop Sidebar.
These gadgets are designed to come in handy at work (to-do list, currency converter, calendar), at school (calculator, Wikipedia, translation tool), or just passing time (news, blogs, games), Kasia Chmielinski of Google told Macsimum News.
Here are some examples of cross-platform Gadgets:
YouTube— you can search and watch YouTube videos from Dashboard
Virtual Flower Pot—you can water it and watch the flowers bloom
Weather Globe, which displays weather conditions inside a 3D glass sphere
For users, this means they can install hundreds of Google Gadgets with just one click and run them in Dashboard. They can also use Gadgets to enhance their personal web sites by copying and-pasting the HTML into the page’s source code.
From a gadget developer’s perspective, the Google Gadgets API allows them to create one set of gadgets that will work on both Mac and PC platforms eliminating the need to create gadgets for both platforms, Chmielinksi said.
Article Information
Comment on this Article Print this Article Email this Article Digg This
Contributor
Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
