Dashboard Icon
Dashboard Widgets

Note: please use the "Archive Utility" application provided with the system software to extract the widget from the downloaded zip archive - some third-party applications corrupt widgets upon extraction which will result in the widget not being able to be installed.

GV Connect

GV Connect Widget screenshot - click to download

Are you looking for an easy way to call or send SMS messages to your contacts using your Google Voice number right from your fingertips? GV Connect is your answer: a Google Voice Mac client in the form of a widget which allows you make calls and send SMS messages from your Google Voice number to your Address Book and Google contacts right from the Dashboard:

Widget Usage

Account overview - When the widget is first installed it will open on the account setting page - enter your email address and password to log into your Google Voice account (the password will be stored in your System Keychain).
- Once you are successfully logged in, the widget will display your Google Voice number and currently available calling credit. Click on your number to add/remove/change numbers connected to your account or click on your current balance to open your billing history (pages open in your default browser).
- After you are logged into your account, the account view of the widget will list all your numbers connected to your Google Voice number and quickly lets you change their forwarding status (what numbers to ring when your GV number is called). You can also enable or disable "do not disturb" for your GV number (all incoming calls will go directly to voice mail).
- If you have any unread items in your Google Voice inbox, the number of unread messages will be displayed as a little badge on the widget (see first screen shot). Clicking on the unread badge will take you directly to your Google Voice inbox in your default browser.
- Use the small icons on the left side of the widget to switch between active pages - from left to right, these are: Call, SMS, and Account. The icon for the currently selected page is highlighted.
Contact auto-completion - On the Call or SMS page of the widget, start typing a name or number in the "Number" field and the widget will show you a popup menu with matches from both, the System Address Book application and your Google Contacts - the little icon to the left of a contact identifies which database the contact belongs to (beige Address Book icon for contacts local to your computer and blue person icon for contacts from your Google contacts). Use the up/down arrow and Enter keys or click to select a contact from the list.
Note: on the SMS page, only "mobile" contacts or "Google Voice" contacts will be shown in the popup (anything with a custom label with the word "Google" in it will be identified as a "Google Voice" contact - identified by "(G)" by the widget, phones with the label "iPhone" will show as "()").
- For numbers entered in international format (starting with "+") or North-American numbers entered in the format "(xxx)…" the number's country and local time will be shown below the number.
- Select the number you want to have called to start the call from the "Phone to Ring" popup (it will be automatically populated with all verified numbers connected to your Google Voice account).
- To initiate a call or send an SMS message, click the Google Voice icon in the top left corner (while the icon is shown in red when placing a call you can click it again to cancel the call).
- As Google Voice does not allow sending a SMS message to multiple recipients at a time, the message text will remain in the text field after successfully sending a message so that the same message can be sent to another contact without having to re-type it. Double-clicking the SMS message text area will empty the current message text - see hidden preferences if you want to change this behavior.
- If you have Growl installed, the widget will alert you of new SMS and Voicemails - you can change the frequency of these alerts or turn the feature completely off on the back of the widget. Clicking on the Growl notification for a new SMS will mark it as read on GV and re-open the Dashboard, showing the widget on the SMS view with the contact's number already entered in the number field so that you can quickly write a reply. Clicking the notification for a VM will download the original VM into your Downloads folder and play the VM.

Hidden Preferences

The widget contains additional settings that can only be changed from the command line (use /Applications/Utilities/Terminal to enter the commands below).
defaults write widget-com.aamann.widget.GV_Connect PluginLogEnabled -bool 'YES'
Enable additional debug logging into the console - use 'NO' (default value) to disable logging.
defaults write widget-com.aamann.widget.GV_Connect DoubleClickClearsSMSText -bool 'NO'
Disable clearing the SMS message text by double-clicking into the text field - use 'YES' (default value) to re-enable this feature.
defaults write widget-com.aamann.widget.GV_Connect ClearSMSTextAfterSending -bool 'YES'
Automatically clear the SMS message text after sending a message - use 'NO' (default value) to keep the message text intact after sending.

GV Connect is not a product of Google and is neither affiliated nor endorsed in any way by Google or Google Voice.

Download Link

Download GV Connect Widget (requires MacOS X 10.5 or higher and an existing Google Voice account)

Acknowledgements

GV Connect uses BSJSONAdditions (© 2006 Blake Seely) and XPathQuery (© 2008 Matt Gallagher) for its GV data parsing.

Version History

1.8.1 (November 19, 2009)

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1.8 (November 17, 2009)

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1.7.2 (October 30, 2009)

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1.7.1 (October 20, 2009)

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1.7 (October 16, 2009)

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1.6.1 (October 9, 2009)

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1.6 (September 29, 2009)

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1.5 (August 25, 2009)

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1.1.2 (August 18, 2009)

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1.1.1 (August 16, 2009)

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1.0.1 (August 14, 2009)

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1.0 (August 13, 2009)

Initial release

Sports Fan

Sports Fan Widget screenshot - click to download

Keep an eye on your favorite sports teams - all the information you need in one single and small widget. Show the current scoreboard, full results from previous days, the upcoming schedule (game times are displayed in your local time), or current standings. The widget supports Baseball (MLB and minor leagues down to Class A), Basketball (NBA, WNBA, and Men's NCAA College), Football (NFL and NCAA College), and Hockey (NHL). You can open multiple instances of the widget to track different sports or teams - each instance of the widget will remember your selections.

Widget Usage

- After specifying the sport, select a league (if multiple leagues are supported) and your favorite team to have games and current place in standings highlighted. The widget will also show your favorite team's logo in the background of the widget. Clicking the team logo on the back of the widget will open the team's home page in your browser.
- Click "Done" to switch to the front of the widget.
- Per default, the widget will now display the current day's (or week's) scoreboard, giving you a quick overview of all games. Games show the current (or final) score or game start time (for your local time zone). Winning teams' names are highlighted on the scoreboard to more easily identify them.
- Use the arrows next to the date at the top to go back or forward in history - clicking either the date or the 'Scoreboard' text will reload the current scoreboard (when displaying the football scoreboard, clicking the week title on top will open a popup menu to allow you to directly jump to any week's scoreboard/schedule).
game detail popup screenshot (football) game detail popup screenshot (baseball) - Pointing the mouse over any ongoing or finished game in the scoreboard will display a little popup with the current (or final) game standings (you can select to not show those popups on the back of the widget) - the game shown in the popup will be highlighted in the scoreboard. (When displaying the baseball scoreboard, pointing the mouse over a future game will display the starting pitchers scheduled for that game.)
Note that the popup might not appear immediately as the widget has to download the latest information first. The popup will automatically close after a few seconds, when you move the mouse over it, or when you click anywhere on the background of the widget.
- Where available, teams with current ball possession will be shown in italics, ball possession in the red zone (football) and power play (hockey) will be highlighted in red.
- Click on any game (ongoing or finished) to open the game's gamecenter website.
- Click on 'Standings' on the top right to select a which standings (or polls for NCAA sports) to display. Mouse over any team's statistics to display additional numbers (the popup will close after ten seconds or once you move over it - you can select to not show those popups on the back of the widget). Click any line in the standings table to open the team's home page.
- When available, teams having clinched a division or already eliminated from a race are highlighted in the standings.
- Switch back to the scoreboard by clicking on 'Scoreboard' on the top left.
- The current day's scoreboard will automatically refresh (refresh interval depends on current game activity).
quick sport change popup screenshot - While the mouse is over the widget, a little icon corresponding to the currently selected sport will appear in the widget's lower left corner. Clicking this icon will show a little popup (see screenshot on the right) allowing for quickly changing the current sport without having to go to the back of the widget. When changing sports this way, the widget will display the league last selected for the sport.

Download Link

Download Sports Fan Widget (requires MacOS X 10.4.3 or higher)

Version History

1.3.18 (November 11, 2009)

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1.3.17 (October 4, 2009)

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1.3.16 (September 17, 2009)

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1.3.15 (August 25, 2009)

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1.3.14 (August 9, 2009)

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1.3.13 (July 13, 2009)

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1.3.12 (June 13, 2009)

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1.3.11 (May 29, 2009)

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1.3.10 (May 3, 2009)

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1.3.9 (April 20, 2009)

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1.3.8 (April 16, 2009)

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1.3.7 (December 21, 2008)

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1.3.6 (November 5, 2008)

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1.3.5 (September 30, 2008)

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1.3.4 (September 13, 2008)

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1.3.3 (September 6, 2008)

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1.3.2 (August 12, 2008)

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1.3.1 (June 27, 2008)

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1.3 (June 1, 2008)

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1.2.9 (May 10, 2008)

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1.2.8 (April 12, 2008)

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1.2.7 (April 6, 2008)

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1.2.6 (March 31, 2008)

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1.2.5 (March 29, 2008)

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1.2.4 (March 22, 2008)

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1.2.3 (March 19, 2008)

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1.2.2 (March 18, 2008)

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1.2 (March 8, 2008)

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1.1.3 (February 12, 2008)

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1.1.2 (February 10, 2008)

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1.1.1 (January 15, 2008)

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1.1 (January 12, 2008)

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1.0 (January 3, 2008)

Initial release - changes below are between the individual sports widget and this first release.

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SigAlert Traffic Maps

SigAlert Widget screenshot - click to download

The SigAlert Traffic Maps widget allows you to get the latest traffic maps for your local freeway traffic.

Using the maps and information from SigAlert.com, the following cities/regions are currently supported:

Widget Usage

After selecting the region to be displayed on the back of the widget, the front will display up-to-date information for the selected region (the speeds and incident reports will be updated when the Dashboard is first displayed and can be manually refreshed by moving the mouse over any route on the widget or by clicking the reload icon in the top right corner of the widget).
Map Controls - The widget can be resized (from the bottom right of the widget's front) and allows panning and zooming of the map so that you can focus on the data you are interested in (settings will be stored for each instance of the widget - you can have multiple widgets showing different maps open at the same time). Use the map controls in the top left corner to pan and zoom the map, click on the "i" just below the zoom controls to flip to the back of the widget to change the currently displayed region.
- Pointing the mouse over any route or incident icon will display a popup with additional details - pointing the map over a camera icon will display a live traffic camera picture from that location. The popup will automatically close after a few seconds.

Download Link

Download SigAlert Widget (requires MacOS X 10.4.3 or higher)

Version History

2.0.2 (May 9, 2009)

Improvements/bug fixes

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2.0 (May 5, 2009)

Complete re-write of the widget to properly work with the re-designed SigAlert website.
As the widget content is now being served directly from SigAlert instead of having the widget to manually parse all the data, the widget should be much more stable and automatically profit from updates to the website.

1.5.5 (March 18, 2008)

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1.5.4 (February 12, 2008)

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1.5.3 (February 4, 2008)

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1.5.2 (December 5, 2007)

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1.5.1 (May 21, 2007)

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1.5 (May 12, 2007)

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1.4 (May 5, 2007)

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1.3.2 (April 8, 2007)

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1.3.1 (March 13, 2007)

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1.3 (February 7, 2007)

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1.2.4 (January 7, 2007)

1.2.3 (January 4, 2007)

1.2.2 (January 1, 2007)

1.2.1 (January 1, 2007)

1.2 (December 31, 2006)

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1.1.1 (December 28, 2006)

1.1 (December 27, 2006)

1.0 (December 26, 2006)

Initial release.

Retired Widgets

Looking for my "Baseball", "Basketball", "Football", and "Hockey" widgets?
These widgets are now all combined into the "Sports Fan" widget and are no longer supported in their previous stand-alone versions. The new widget offers the same or even more functionality, preserving the previous individual looks while being easier to support and enhance or extend in the future.

Disclaimer

I wrote these widgets for my own personal use and they work for me. They are provided "as-is" and I don't take any responsibility for the integrity of your data.
These widgets are distributed free of charge - I decided to make them available for the Macintosh community. I have a day job and I will still survive if nobody sends me money - I am happy with hearing that I saved someone's day with my little widgets. However, donations are not turned away;-) - you can make a secure donation through PayPal.
These widgets may not be redistributed via the web or any other electronic media except with explicit written consent by the author.

GV Connect (Google Voice) - Sports Fan (Baseball, Basketball, Football, Hockey) - SigAlert Traffic Maps
© 2006-2009 Andreas Amann - Contact - Send a Donation