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If you use Konfabulator on XP, there is a fantastic widget that does this for the W0indows version of iTunes. It has the bonus feature of adding the album art to the songs as well. Link

Duck and cover

Serenity in 156 days and counting...

But with Konfabulator, you can have your own sun at home!

• All we want is a big fat button to the widgets-gallery download-page, and no other distractions. Because all 95% of the visitors want is to download widgets. The best thing would be to actually make the widgets page the front page
• Show all widgets in a similar way: Title, a few words, a screenshot that is always the same size. Let users rate widgets and display the result here, too.
• Allocate the same space for each widget. Show 5 or 10 of them on a page.
• Have a detail page with further comments by the author and feedback by the users.
• Make everything stylish. Widgets are, in a way, both about substance and style.

• Konfabulator The original. Nice, clean, efficient. And beautiful.
• Dashboard Exchange Inconsitent design, varying preview sizes, too much stuff shown at once, no ratings.
• Dasboard Widgets Tiny preview pictures that don't convey any information. Some don't even have a preview, this should be mandatory. Compare it with Konfabulator and will likely agree that the page is pretty ugly. No ratings.
• Dashboard Lineup The newest contender, has more proudness than value. It's not even a dedicated widget-database, just a plain ol' blog. No short description. Only 2 widgets. No ratings, only comments.

In 2 weeks Apple releases tiger, and thousands of people will eagerly search the web for widgets. There's a huge opportunity here, too bad all current contenders didn't realize this.

In addition to having written a weather warning widget with the information they provide, I've noticed that their system usually takes beatings nicely whenever widespread severe weather occurs. Based on the interactions I've had with the website in creating the widget, their backend consists of the PHP/MySQL duo... they also run Apache 2 and Red Hat according to Netcraft. Their warnings are in both RSS and XML feeds. So it's been nice working with what they've been willing to provide, especially when you consider the large audience they serve.

Konfabulator is a pretty amazing and very versatile little utility. If you've never used it you should definitely check out this list of Konfabulator widgets over at Widgetgallery.com.

official site gallery(can't zoom in, since site is /.ed) widget gallery google image search of 'konfabulator' apple's dashboard

Now Google has always been a multi-platform and anti-windows/msft player... So i'd expect an OSX/Linux version first... Luckly, some David Estes have published a Konfabulator widged that does just the same, and works pretty well.