Free Republic

New TipKalc, KolorWheel widgets for iPod Koloroo today announced the release of the first widgets that run on any iPod with a color screen. TipKalc is an easy-to-use tip calculator with instant check-splitter. "Just spin your iPod's Click Wheel until your bill amount is displayed in the center of the screen. Everything else is automatically calculated for you. It calculates recommended 15% and 20% tip amounts, grand totals, and even splits the check up to five ways." KolorWheel is a color utility that provides scientifically formulated color schemes to match a web page, home decor, shirt or outfit, etc. Both...

Yahoo! Inc. on Monday will announce the acquisition of Konfabulator, a Macintosh and Windows application that allows users to run mini files known as Widgets on their desktop -- the same model used by Apple for its Dashboard application. Yahoo! company executives said they would also be giving Konfabulator away for free, completely doing away with the US$19.95 currently charged for the product. Yahoo! said the reason they purchased Konfabulator was that they wanted an easy way to open up its APIs to the developer community and allow them easy access to the information on the Yahoo! Web site. In...

May 09, 2005 7:00 pm ETMacCentral Dashboard: Widget (In)Security By Dori Smith A new Web page documents an issue with Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger's new Dashboard feature that, left unchecked, could potentially be exploited by malware developers, according to the page's author. The exploit is described and demonstrated on a page called Zaptastic: Blueprint for a widget of mass destruction. Going by the nom de plume of Stephan.com, the author has described how Safari 2.0's default preference settings could lead users to unwittingly download and install a Dashboard widget. There's a common misconception that auto-install of widgets means...

Apple's Dashboard Hacked May 9, 2005 1:50PM What makes the issue particularly difficult to deal with, according to Stephan.com, is Apple's decision not to provide a documented way to remove Widgets once installed. In fact, Apple's Mac OS X Help files state specifically that "You cannot remove widgets from the Widget Bar or change their order."   A developer has demonstrated a Dashboard exploit in Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" that a malicious Web site owner could use to install Widgets you might not want on your Mac. Writing under the name of Stephan.com, the developer said that a...

Now that the battle for Baghdad is all but won, it may be time to clear up a few things. First: Those who thought it a bad idea for America to launch what was the moral equivalent of unilateral war on Iraq have nothing to apologize for. It's necessary to say this because the polls -- in America and elsewhere -- have been showing more and more support for the American effort. Are all these people changing their minds about the rightness of the war? Some of them, no doubt. But what seems a more reasonable conclusion is not that...