Dashboard Confessional

Last night I went trolling for more dashboard widgets, culminating in yet another episode of binge downloading.

Yes, dear reader, I'm a widgetwhore.

A "widgetwhore," as defined by Urban Dictionary:

"A Mac user (OSX 10.4+) who fills up the dashboard with widgets, of which many, or at least some, are unnecessary or ridiculous. Most common among new Mac users, particularly recently converted windoze users. Commonly, but not always, characterized by cuteness or bouncyness."

I'd say I'm a textbook case -- except for the cutesy/bouncy bit (all those cutesy icons I've downloaded onto my Mac don't count, right?). What fuels my addiction? Boredom? An empty, shallow existence? The delusion that somewhere, out there on the interwebs, is a widget for each and all of my heretofore unfulfilled (and bottomless) needs?

My down-the-time-hole project for today was to purge all unused widgets (Ooh! A goldfish aquarium!) and whittle my dashboard down to these seven six favorite and neither ridiculous nor unnecessary widgets that I use on a regular basis:

Color Burn -- A daily dose of color palette inspiration, complete with hexadecimal values (for all the web geeks and bloggers wanting to customize their templates). I also enjoy the quirky palette names, such as "Kung Fu Grip" or "Extraterrestrial Supermodel."

Screenshot Plus -- I love this screen capture widget. It's what I used for all the pictures in this post. It captures a full screen, a window, a rectangular selection, even a widget. There's also a timer function. So simple, but it does everything I need from a screen capture app.

Wikity Widget -- Better than any notepad or sticky notes widget I've tried. Using wiki technology, this little gadget automatically adds links to your notes and makes your sundry collection searchable. Great for someone like me who's constantly jotting down (usually on Post-Its scattered all over the house) or typing random notes, which I can never find or forget about.

Tags - CSS -- A way to quickly search for all those CSS properties and attributes I'm just starting to learn and having a hard time keeping straight in my head. Comes in handy when you're trying to tweak your blogger templates. There's a version for HTML tags, too, and these two widgets are great in tandem. 

Oxford American Dictionary/Thesaurus -- The only widget that came bundled with my Mac that I actually use. Gets heavy usage when I'm composing these blog posts or, say, reading a New Yorker article full of egghead words.

Boredom Button -- Because boredom is bad for your health. And sometimes, I just want my ennui to vanish with the mere push of a button. This is kind of that button. The sites it bounces to are well-edited, and I've found some bookmark worthy links this way. Such as this for quirky news (although English is maybe not the native language of their writing team), and this for artsy images and creative inspiration.

Dashometer -- The widget that inspired this post and got me thinking about my addiction. It's a "pedometer" that measures your dashboard usage. But now that it's helped me recognize that I have a problem, I'll probably purge this widget as "unnecessary" -- ironic, isn't it?

Any other widgetwhores out there? What's on your dashboard now? Post your Dashometer stats, if you have them.

UPDATE: I've cleaned out my dashboard, but now I'm using iGoogle as my homepage and loading that up with widgets. So I guess all I've done is transfer my widget addiction.