learningIT

What are some of your favourite widgets? I haven’t rummaged through newer widgets in a while now and probably should. My…uh…widgets, are pictured below.

I labeled a few that may not be so clear. Some are self-explanatory and come equipped with a Mac. Yes, I use two clocks. One for Japan and the other for Canada. Some of the others I use are:

• Adobe Creative Studio Help – provides a collection of hints and tips for Adobe’s Creative Suite.
• BPM Counter – count the beats per minute for songs to enter them into iTunes
• Guitar Chords – Just pick a note and type of chord. Then watch as the widget displays how to fret that chord on the guitar. Scroll up the neck and see alternate ways of playing that same chord.
• Hula Girl – Dancing Hula Girl, Boy, Jesus or Homer to sit atop your Dashboard and provide literally decades of hilarity…seriously. Jiggles to your iTunes as well.
• Leopard Tricks – The Leopard Tricks widget displays an RSS feed of the popular leopardtricks.com website. Leopard Tricks prives tips, tricks and news on Apple’s latest operating system, Leopard.
• Oblique -
• Pianochords 2.1 – shows and plays all the musical chords you can think of. Just press a key on the keyboard to set the root of the chord and click the display to select the derived chord. It’s as simple as that!
• Plasmatube – The PlasmaTube dashboard widget leaves your Dad’s old Motion Light in the 60’s where it belongs!
• Sphere – Helps you design your website, redecorate your home, or perhaps even choose your outfit in the morning. It can even simulates various forms of color blindness! Sphere uses basic color theory in order to automatically provide you with visually appealing colors.
• Tabit – Tabit Widget searches Ultimate-Guitar.com for guitar tabs and chords based on song title.
• Youpi – helps calculate your body mass index. I couldn’t seem to find this widget when I did a search. But, try this one instead. It’s more attractive. Or this one too.
• Not pictured, but I also use Catalyst TuneUp for GarageBand. They offer over 150 helpful and sometimes quirky ideas to solve that creative block. If the first idea doesn’t help, spin the widget again.

It is also worth checking subject specific widgets. I have used some before and installed them onto our class computer where students could simply go and check the item for themselves. Browse through available widgets here. Any other recommendations from readers?

The Productive Flourishing blog offers some interesting free planners for personal use. The site states:

After years of struggling with the planners designed for and by office workers, I figured out that it wasn’t me that was the problem: it was the design of the planners.

Creative people approach their work differently. Most of us don’t work 8-5, and we don’t have projects that we can plan to get done during the same times each day. The limiting factor for us is not the amount of time we have available, but rather the type of time we have available.

One size does not fit all when it comes to planners. Check out the planners to see which ones best relate to what you’re trying to do, and give them a try!

Check the link above to see the planners which best relate to what you’re trying to do, and give them a try. They may help increase your productivity.

25 Free Mac Apps That Will Boost Your Productivity from Smashing Magazine.

“There are many applications that can help you work faster and efficiently. Though, not many applications come cheap. For this post we tried to digg deep to find the best selection of free and/or open source Mac applications that will help you be a more efficient designer. We’re covering from application launchers, GTD (Getting Things Done) to design utilities that can help you focus on what’s important: create.”

Are you unproductive? It doesn’t have to be complex. First, get things done that matter to you! Here are seven of the best, simple, and sometimes seemingly upside down tips for being more prolific (from Zen Habits)

Number 5 below is my favourite:

Focus on the Three C’s. When it comes down to it, there are three major groups of things we need to do to succeed at whatever it is we want to do. We need to Create, we need to Connect, and we need to Consume. Or in other words, we need to produce/share, build and nurture relationships, and keep ourselves savvy in our field. An imbalance in these areas will stagnate our progress. If we’re always consuming, but never getting our ideas out there, we won’t make any progress toward our goals. If we’re connecting without creating, we’ll have nothing of value to share. And if we’re creating without continually learning, we’ll become outdated. Defining a focus of one of the Three C’s helps us stay focused on our purpose for the day. It also helps us realize that spending time on Twitter and socializing is just as important as creating. It’s all about balance.

Once again, thanks to Shane M. Photo from Riot Jane on Flickr.