10 Seriously Worthless Dashboard Widgets Or Are They?

Here at Mindre Panda we've made a couple of widgets, and well, they are for the most part useless. But hey, nobody said a widget had to do something important like calculate the speed of light inside of a blackhole or explain the inner workings of the flex capacitor. Granted it's nice to have a widget that makes life easier, but sometimes it's nice to have one that just does something worthless. So without further ado commence with the uselessness...

Click on the widget image to be taken to either Apple's Widget Download Site orDashboardWidgets.com to download it.

1. The Family Guy Random Quote Generator

R Panda is probably tempted to upgrade to Tiger just to use this thing. All it does is show a random Family Guy quote. You can customize the front with 5 different characters. It currently ranks number 7 on Apples top 50.

Worthlessness Level: Depends on how much you like the Family Guy.

Verdict: Better than the Family Guy podcast. Seriously, have you heard that crap?

2. Decorative World Flags

I don't know peeps. I am seriously freakin' tired of flags. Let it be Canadian ones on backpacks so people know they aren't Americans abroad or Swedish ones proudly flying on one of the princesses birthday. But alas, some people need them to feel apart of something. Like a nation or the like. I like to feel a part of Singapore. Let it be known that the flags are in fact animated. Let is also be known that I hate animated GIF's.

Worthlessness Level: Very

Verdict: Nationalism has never been a good thing.

3. Late Show Top 10 List

Spanning 12 years of top ten lists, this is not only amusing it's an archive. Oddly, insteading of showing all ten at once, you have to go through them one at a time, upping the excitement and anticipation. On the back you can choose a specific date, so if you remember that really funny one from October 3, 1997...you can relive it whenever you want.

Worthlessness Level: Quite worthless, but it shows how quickly current affairs become unfunny.

Verdict: Provides an excellent waste of time.

4. Chi-Pet

Oh man, I think this is too classic. The creator actually refers to it as "useless", and well, it is. Although he is planning to update it so that it grows fur or sprouts or whatnot. Oddly it has more than 600 downloads, way more than any of our widgets.

Worthlessness Level: Extremely worthless.

Verdict: At least it makes you laugh when you look at it.

5. Cluck the Chicken

Ok, well this thing is useless. Essentially you pretend to ask a question and then click on Cluck and he gives you his advice in an animated chicken laying egg sort of way. Essentially a magic 8 ball in chicken form. I highly recommend looking at the comments regarding Cluck the Chicken on DashboardWidgets.com, they are priceless. Click on the chicken and check them out.

Worthlessness Level: Eggstremely worthless.

Verdict: Insert another bad chicken joke here.

6. CutUPo

It was only a matter of time. Sometimes it's fun to simulate something on a computer in a non-computer way, but magnetic poetry may be going too far. Of course it does give you more fridge front real estate.

Worthlessness Level: Well, that depends on how poetic you are.

Verdict: Two palmtree hot rain night-er emotion.

7. YOLK MINI

With more than 1500 downloads this amazes me. And this is the mini-version. For people who eat eggs often I guess this is is helpful. It's an egg timer. Why you need an egg timer on your computer is beyond me. I suppose you could time things other than eggs with it since it gives you quite a host of options on the back. It will even display a message or/and make a sound when your egg is done.

Worthlessness Level: Depends on how many eggs you eat a day.

Verdict: Good for timing things other than eggs.

8. Lite Brite Widget

Yes, another computer version of something that already existed in a solid form. Good times are sure to follow after downloading this one. Although it is difficult to make life like mindre pandas.

Worthlessness Level: Depends on how complicated you think Photoshop is.

Verdict: Definitely unique. Too bad it doesn't come with those black sheets of paper that told you where to put which peg to make a clown face.

9. My Name Is

Now we are getting into the really pointless widgets. This one displays your name, or (according to the developer) SOMEONE ELSE´S! Users take care when attempting such a crazy trick. Someone could catch you in your cunning lie.

Worthlessness Level: Utterly beyond a doubt completely totally worthless.

Verdict: Fun play time = 4 seconds.

10. Birthstone Finder

From the developer, "Allows you to easily search by month the list of birthstones and shows an animated birthstone that shows you the birthstone color and also the name of the birthstone." As you can see, yours truly is a diamond. Bling-bling.

Worthlessness Level: Birthstone.

Verdict: Birthstone.

Well, there you have it. I now have to go and uninstall all these things. Except maybe that Family Guy one.

In the next installment I will create a worthless widget and see how many people download it. Since it seems that worthless widgets get way more downloads than ones that actually do something. What will the widget be? It will be a Peep™. One side will be yellow the other will be purple. Follow the action soon...

K. Panda