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Widget Wonders Meet the web applets that interact with your desktop 24/7/365.

By Mike Hogan

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One of the few truisms left in computing: If you want to know what you'll be doing on a Windows PC tomorrow, check out what's happening on a Mac today. And what's happening is widgets--small pieces of HTML, JavaScript or other web code that get downloaded to the Mac's Dashboard, where they can do any number of internet-ish things.

A widget might be used to monitor an eBay auction, a stock ticker or a videocam; it might update the content of your favorite blogs automatically. A widget could be a digital clock, calendar, company wiki, game or virtual aquarium for your virtual fish.

It's unclear whether Apple or former Mac developer Konfabulator invented widgets. But, like so many PC innovations before them, they incubated in Cupertino's creative ooze and were ushered into widespread use by Mac OS X. Thousands are available for download as freeware or shareware from Apple's website to monitor, measure or count everything from disk space to days left 'til The Simpsons movie.