Widgets & Desktop Objects.  They are terms that have become increasingly popular over the past couple of years.  What are they? Why do we need them? Why now?

Widgets & Desktop Objects can be used interchangeably. They all have to do with one thing making the desktop home to more than static images (called "icons").  Since Apple released the Lisa back in 1983sh, the computer desktop has increasingly moved towards a visual interface. The GUI (or gooey).  The little images on your computer screen represented programs and data.  But for the most part, they were just static images of a fixed size (except on the Amiga where each icon could be of different size).

Desktop objects and widgets take the icon concept to the next logical step.  Desktop objects became popularized by DesktopX. These objects were live. They could be independently sized, they could react to system messages. The simplest desktop objects were treated like icons. They represented programs or data. But they were independently sized and would grow or zoom or spin when the mouse was over them.

The objects in this screenshot are typical. They were essentially glorified icons but they animated when the mouse was over them and their size was independently of the system icon size restraints (i.e. they didn't have to be 32x32 pixels).

Over time, these objects became increasingly complex and powerful. At some point, many of these objects were essentially mini-programs in themselves. This mini-programs started supplanting stand alone programs that performed these same uses.  Email checkers, analog clocks, digital clocks, MP3 players, CPU meters, etc. Long ago there used to be entire skin libraries dedicated to programs that were simply digital clocks that could be skinned. These enhanced objects, because of their lower overhead, slowly squeezed these programs near extinction (Beatnik, while far less popular than it used to be, still survives).

When Konfabulator for MacOS came out, they skipped the whole "enhanced icons" concept of desktop objects and went straight to the mini-application era.  This has more to do with timing than anything else I suspect. By 2003, computers were starting to be powerful enough to handle multiple slick looking mini programs on the desktop at once.  Konfabulator called these mini-programs "widgets" and that's the term I'll use here to describe desktop objects with significant functionality.

But that only answers, what they are. Why do we need this stuff? Why now?

The why are they so popular now part is easier to answer.  Simply put, widgets, to be compelling, must be irregularly shaped just like icons are. But until recently, having irregularly shaped things (Besides icons) on the desktop required considerable overhead.  Users who tried DesktopX 1 oh so long ago may have come away with a negative impression because of all the effort that had to be done in order to simply display something, on your desktop, irregularly shaped.

But since Windows XP has come out, the hardware and OS support for layered windows has been there so that it's much easier to have irregularly shaped things on the desktop.  Remember, even Winamp, until Winamp 5, was a square.

But that's why widgets have really become popular. Enough people can now run many irregularly shaped things on their desktops at once without it affecting their system resources/performance.

But that leaves the question: WHY use them?  I think the real question should be, why not use them. It's like asking "Why user a computer?"  It all depends on what you need to do.  Personally, I don't use weather widgets.  I don't care about what my CPU use is at a given moment.  I don't need to know my net traffic.  I really don't want to know my stock prices yet. And I know what time it is by looking at the Start bar.  So I probably sound like the last person who would recommend using widgets.

And yet, here I am recommending them because while I don't use those particular widgets I use lots of other widgets.  I have a widget that tells me how many handles are in use.  I have another widget that tells me the store status.  I have a widget that controls iTunes. I have a widget that tells me the CNN headline news.  I have a widget that lets me know the latest blogs on JoeUser. And yes, I have a couple of little pets on my desktop too.  And with DesktopX 2.2, I can hit F9 to bring these widgets to top (except for the pets who are desktop level and ignore the F9 key). 

A different person might have totally different uses for widgets.  But like I said, widgets are the next logical step for icons. What icons someone has on their desktop changes from machine to machine. Since the overhead of widgets is so low, their value-add becomes pretty compelling pretty early on. 

And so that's why I think we're seeing such an explosion of widget related software.  The hardware is there, the software is now there, there's a growing community of widget makers (it's a logical extension of skinning after all) and the software is mature enough that there's very little reason not to have a widget or two on your desktop. And unlike other programs, you can mix and match your widget enabling software.  I could mix DesktopX with Samurize or any other widget enabling program.

Some from Dirk & Danielle's wedding. August 21, 2004.

Because I'm mentioned in Time Magazine this week the subject of "the company" came up from time to time at the wedding I attended.

One question that comes up, inexplicably, is "are you still running your company out of your house?"  I've had this question posted 4 times by family members. I'm not sure how this comes about.  Our company was never run out of our house.  It was in my dorm room for a very short amount of time, 11 years ago. But since 1995 it's had an office. 

I've wondered how that sort of thing got started. Why the assumption that any company I would have would, inevitably, be too small to have an office building (let alone a 7000 square foot one we're in the process of purchasing).  Not that we're some sort of mega corp.  But we're a long long way from being a garage shop and have been for a good decade.

Being parnaoid, I tend to read a small amount of patronization when discussing "the company".  Nothing malicious mind you. But a sort of "Oh, that's cute he's started his own little computer company." 

I think most of that patronization is my own fault. While my writings don't tend to convey this, in person, I tend to take on the role of comic relief. I enjoy trying (though usually failing <g>) to make people laugh.  I used to be much more like that when I was younger (teen years especially). So I think it's hard for some people in my family to take me very seriously.

Is it just me or does anyone see the irony of the people who are hysterical about the swift-boat attacks on Kerry?  Kerry, who is running for President, and his supporters arguing that these guys, many of whom are pretty normal "regular guys" are somehow political activists with (egads) an agenda.

And because they have an agenda what they say can't be trusted.  But somehow we can trust what Kerry says...because..he doesn't have an agenda?

My cousin Dirk got married this weekend. The wife and kids and I went out to Plainwell for it and had a good time. It was a pretty thorough family reunion for the "Bradley" side (my mom's side of the family).  Dirk and Danielle had been together for 13 years, that's a year longer than my wife and I. 

Normally with weddings you hope for the best but you can never be sure with how things will work out. Not so with D & D since they are a great couple.  Why they decided to get married now I'm not sure. I suspect that their parents both hope there's kids in the future.

But we sure had a good time. It's always good to talk to relatives who you haven't seen for a long time.

Every so often I see someone say they're not going to blog anymore because they didn't get their articles featured to the home page or because there aren't enough comments on their blogs.

I think those people need to ask themselves why they're blogging in the first place. 

Personally, I blog because I enjoy writing. I enjoy communicating with others.  And yes, I do want others to read what I write.  But I don't sit back and wait for some automated system to promote my stuff.  There are blog sites that simply track what's happening in the blogsphere.  Those people who are interested in getting their work out there need to do some leg work to promote their blogs.  Secondly, they need to keep at it for a long time.It takes time to build readership.

Anyone who thinks they can crank out a blog site and have hundreds of regulrar readers in a few months is in for disappointment.  Well, I should qualify, what makes JoeUser unique of all blog sites on the net is that many bloggers will get a very rapid readership. So JU is your best case scenario and even then, it's still going to take effort and time.

One of my favorite blog sites is called One Hand Clapping. It's been up for a long while. Every day high quality articles for years on end.  Many articles have few, if any comments.  But he keeps at it slowly building up his readership. 

So before giving up, ask yourself why you're blogging. If you want to succeed it takes both time and effort. Don't be over reliant on the built in system to instantly generate an active readership.

There have been some reports that the Ubi Soft Safe Disc CD protection mechanism causes the game to crash on some systems where it cannot detect a CD-ROM drive.

If that is the case:

(1) Make sure you download 1.01

(2) Contact [email protected] about this.

(3) Post here so that we also know about it.

(4) In a pinch, you can email me at [email protected] if you are interested in trying out an unofficial version that may resolve it.

The Political Machine 1.01 is now available for download for those who purchased the retail boxed version.  The new version adds a multi-save game manager and now includes much better multiplayer support (a built in lobby is now available).

It also fixes some bugs that users have reported. Most notably, the save game during a campaign game bug is fixed (if you saved a game during the middle of a campaign and came back, it wouldn't count it as a victory).

We also improved the load time, fixed some typos, and added in a few more portraits.

You can download it at: https://www.politicalmachine.com/downloads.asp

A demo version should be out "soon". We wanted to get this version.  If you have TotalGaming.net (www.totalgaming.net) or were one of the users who downloaded the game via the pre-order, you already have this version and should not download this.

Wired News has reviewed The Political Machine. 

"The game itself, at least at intermediate levels, is quick-moving and addictive. I was able to hustle through the 41-week election cycle in about three hours. That's all the time you'll need to win at the beginner's level. But as you boost the difficulty (the levels are labeled "tough," "painful," "masochistic" and "crippling" -- enough to dissuade anyone from going pro), each decision requires considerably more thought and research."

http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,64625,00.html

Here is how you can add new candidates to the game and share them with others:

Step #1 Find the image.  I went on Google and found a picture of John McCain.

Step #2 convert the image to a small PNG.  Don't make it too huge. I made mine something like 150x186 but as long as it's not ridiculously large it should be fine. Then save as .PNG with your favorite graphics package.

Step 3: In the game, create a new candidate and pick your new image and then set him up.

Step 4: Exit game.

Step 5: in your \Data directory there will be a new .candidate file.  Feel free to open it up to give some reasonable value (between 1 and 5) to values that are set to 0. You don't have to touch this, only if you're a perfectionist.

Step 6: Put the .candidate file and the .png in a zip and make it available.

Here's mine:

https://www.politicalmachine.com/extras/johnmccain.zip

PUt the .candidate file in the \data directory and the .PNG file in the \gfx\candidate_images directory

Load up game, pick 'em.

You can put pictures of yourself in too. And in 1.01, those images will transfer over the net.