It's Konfabulous!

February 20, 2003 10:12 PM

Konfabulator For Mac users (OSX), desktop widgets of a cute and useful nature. Create your own if you're so inclined; they'll add it to the gallery. Keep track of weather, the latest Homeland Security Department alert level, sports scores, your iTunes status--all in a tiny little application.
posted by padraigin (16 comments total)

This seems neat, but alas.. OSX only.

Reminds me of Samurize (for windows). Although in alpha (.80?) it has the beginnings of what will be a pretty damn powerful desktop app. Create stat output windows... charts of all kinds, really configurable- to output data from all SORTS of sources. People are writing all sorts of modules to extend it... check out the screenshots for some good examples.
posted by shadow45 at 10:26 PM on February 20, 2003

This looks great! Downloading it now, I'll give my review soon. :-)
posted by Plunge at 10:58 PM on February 20, 2003

For those of you on Linux looking for something similar check out Gkrellm.
posted by PenDevil at 11:53 PM on February 20, 2003

Lots of discussion on this at Slashdot.
posted by DakotaPaul at 12:26 AM on February 21, 2003

Yeah, there are Javascript runtimes for all kinds of things. A friend of mine made a system called Sphere designed to help you make overhead, zelda type RPGs.

There's also SlashXB for writing linux desktop apps.

Konfabulator isn't really all that unique.
posted by delmoi at 1:38 AM on February 21, 2003

They're still making Macs?



KIDDING! I'm kidding ...
posted by RavinDave at 1:45 AM on February 21, 2003

Must....get...a....Macintosh....
posted by alumshubby at 4:09 AM on February 21, 2003

I discovered Konfabulator a few days when I saw the Weather app in a screenshot on a Mac rumors forum. Some of the modules are really cool/beautiful, but 25$ still seems a little on the steep side. Maybe after a bunch more useful "widgets" come out it won't seem so expensive, but you can't run too many of these at once on a 1024*768 iBook...
posted by ejoey at 6:38 AM on February 21, 2003

$25 bucks—the cost of a really good pizza... hardly something to complain about.

Now what I want to know is why can't I view anything but the first page of the gallery!

*ack*

*goes away, pouting*
posted by silusGROK at 7:08 AM on February 21, 2003

Yay!

If anyone else was experiencing the same problem—not being able to get to any page of the gallery but the first—I think I figured out the problem: allow them to place a cookie.

Can't they at least have given me an error message!

*grumbles*
posted by silusGROK at 7:14 AM on February 21, 2003

25$ could be interpreted as a lot of things I guess. 1 hour of work, 3 hours of work, bottle of wine, 5 bottles of wine....
posted by ejoey at 7:42 AM on February 21, 2003

1/5th of an unemployment check....
posted by namespan at 8:53 AM on February 21, 2003

I just don't understand all this hype about it. There are already over a hundred bad and/or unfinished "widgets" for things that already exist, like battery meters and keychain controls that now get covered by other apps, or float over the ones I want access to...

All of the current widgets could be done twenty times better as an AppleScript Studio app or even a Sherlock 3 channel (the IDE for both are supplied by Apple free of charge with the OS and is very nicely designed) -- and most of them already have been done as full apps, and in freeware/open source form too.

And in our networked world, it's amazing that the system does not have any auto-updating mechanism for widgets built in. For example, Sherlock 3 channels are entirely server-client based, like web pages. I change the code on my server, and everyone's instance of my channel gets updated. And they are JavaScript (plus XQuery) based as well.

Yes, Konfabulator's "cool," but so far, that's all it is.
posted by teradome at 9:03 AM on February 21, 2003

I think part of the draw is that they encourage you to experiment with it, and you can easily download someone's RSS newsfeed widget and redirect it MacSuperFancyRumors.com, throw a pretty picture on it, upload it, and watch hundreds of people download it.

Of course this is entirely possible with AppleScript Studio & Sherlock, but they seem to be a little more complicated (at least initially) and they don't seem as cool/new to everyone.

You also can't deny how cute those weather apps are.
posted by ejoey at 10:23 AM on February 21, 2003

Used it for the day, pretty dang cool!
posted by Plunge at 9:44 PM on February 21, 2003

Konfabulator is quite neat, but $25 is one-fifth the cost of the entire OS. That's a bit much.
posted by aaron at 1:05 AM on February 23, 2003