Apple and the performing circus widgets

Apple's OS X Tiger brought us many delights, but our favourite by far is the Dashboard. If you've not got Tiger yet (are you mad?) then you won't know that Dashboard is a series of widgets that magically fly in from somewhere off-screen and provide useful things like flight-trackers, encyclopaedias and weather reports.

Our copy of OS X Tiger came with a selection of Dashboard Widgets included, but Mac users have been designing their own over the past few months and we've stocked up on the critters. Here's the lowdown on some of our favourites.

VoiceNotes lets you record lectures or interviews through your PowerBook's internal microphone, or an external USB mic. Wikipedia gives you direct access to the Internet's most eclectic encyclopaedia from your desktop. We find it's great for checking up on facts while we're in the middle of writing articles. SingPod will scour the Internet for the lyrics to the song you're currently listening to in iTunes -- ideal for freaking out colleagues with your apparently intimate knowledge of a Britney Spears album. And This Day In History is a neat little calendar widget that lets you know which historical event coincided with today. -CS