One of the joys of owning my Mac has been widgets – small little programs that let me do common tasks without firing up a big application. Things like quick wikipedia searches, unit conversions, calendars, notepads….the list goes on and on.
Today I added a new widget from the Rijksmuseum that adds some class to my dashboard (move over hula girl!) :
“The Rijkswidget only does one thing, but that one thing is absolutely splendid: it allows you to view a different work from the collection every day. And the ‘reverse side’ of every work provides more information about the work and the painter.”
(Today’s painting “The Night School,” by Gerard Dou, is a little hard to see here, but I couldn’t wait until tomorrow to share this).
Available for both Mac and Windows, users can zoom-in on an image, see the title, artist, and date and brief description. If you want additional information, a link takes you to the online Rijksmuseum site where you can biographical information on the artist, or search for related works. Neato!
Widget writing is easy and can rely on already existing databases or XML metadata published on your website. Windows users can check out widgets at konfab.com or Yahoo! Widgets.
The Anthro Daily Widget (American Museum of Natural History) is the only other museum-produced widget I found. Any other widget-makers out there?
May 30th, 2006 09:16
UBC Botanical Garden has a Dashboard wiget for their photo of the day as well. This was presented at Museums and the Web.
http://www.ubcbotanicalgarden.org/potd/widget.php
May 31st, 2006 05:30
Get A Widget – Tools for Art Lovers and Designers…
I went over to Apple.com to drool checkout the new MacPro 17″ notebook. It sure is pretty. While there I thought I’d look into some new widgets. I can’t image how I was able to survive without these handy little…
May 31st, 2006 09:56
Really way too much fun…and smart to send you to their web site for more. Just the perfect incremental way to learn about a collection over time and a way to make art be present on a daily basis. Clever use of the tool.
June 1st, 2006 10:20
We developed a few Yahoo! Widgets earlier in the year, that are somewhat similar to one from the Rijksmuseum.
http://widgets.yahoo.com/gallery/?search=spadaccini&x=0&y=0
We found the Yahoo! (Konfabulator) environment much easier to work in than the Apple one. (We’re still trying to find the time to finish building Dashboard version of one of our Widgets.)
For those of you who might be interested in building a Yahoo! Widget. We’ve posted a “how to” on our blog.
http://www.ideum.com/blog/2006/01/12/so-you-want-to-build-a-yahoo-widget/
June 2nd, 2006 01:25
[...] Terrain, Touch Tand Symbolic Tables are explored at The Walker’s New Media Initiatives blog. Musematic looks at Widgets from the Rijksmuseum and American Museum of Natural History. ArtLook follows up, adds on and tells us to Get a Widget. (If you frequent the Ideum blog you probably know about our efforts with various widgets.) [...]
June 5th, 2006 01:40
Jim,
I saw some references to the Ideaum article, but couldn’t seem to access it when I created this post. Thanks for contributing it!