The Swiss Army Knife For Your Mac’s Dashboard

My husband and I work for a school near Chicago with hundreds of Macs and PCs. Students have some limitations for which Dashboard Widgets can be installed. Teachers and co-workers can install whatever Widgets will work (within reason).

One of the more popular Widgets, beyond daily comics, weather radar, and movie listings, is Organized. Why? It’s one of those rare one click wonders that gives you just what you want with your click. Updated information. Fast delivery. Nothing else.

There’s not much of a commercial market for Dashboard Widgets. I don’t recall the last time I saw one that sold for more than a few dollars. Most are free. Few are junk.

Organized comes from a Mac software developer who publishes other utilities, hence we have little problem in having it installed on teacher’s Macs.

This handy utility is typical for Widgets. My Mac is set so that as I mouse to a hot corner, Dashboard appears and all my Widgets are within a click. As with most Widgets you won’t need to click much.

Organized displays a variety of information in four panes, three of which are visible with a click. A nice auto cycle through each page would be nice, but you’d still probably wait for the one you want.

World Clocks

Here in the Midwest we’re time sensitive. Central Daylight Time (CDT) in the summer, Central Standard Time in the winter. We’re an hour behind the east coast, but one and two hours ahead of the Mountain and Pacific time zones, respectively.

World Clock displays a stack of time zones and cities at the bottom of the Widget. One click and you know the time in any of the zones you select.

Notes

How many ways do Mac users have to write and save a note? From Stickies to Widgets to full blown information managers to a dozen utilities in between, notes can be written and saved.

Organized does notes. It’s cleverly called Notes. And it behaves much like Notes does on an iPhone.

Events

Most Mac users have come to love iCal. Why? Well, why not? With few exceptions, it works fine for many users, has enough bells and whistles to be effective and useful, and it’s easy to learn and use.

Organized does Events. Click on a date in the Organized calendar, and the bottom pane reveals whatever events you have planned for that day in an attractive list.

To Do List

There are almost as many to-do list managers available for Mac users as notes. Organized has a To-Do button, too, but it brings up whatever you have stored in iCal.

You don’t have to fire up iCal just to see what’s on your to-do list. It’s in the Dashboard.

Organized is a very handy, effective, useful Widget with a singular problem. Too many clicks. Since it doesn’t even require a click to get to a Widget, am I being unduly harsh?

After all, it’s not like you shell out much money for Organized and it does the job. I’m big into mouse overs these days. Instead of clicking on some obscure icons or a row of tabs to get to some specific information, why can’t I just mouse over the tab with the pointer?

Organized is handy, doesn’t take up much screen real estate, and is instantly useable (assuming you’re into iCal) but needs to be less click prone to get to basic information. Otherwise, I could just leave iCal open all the time and the whole shebang of events, notes, and to-do lists becomes a click away without any additional clicks.