The Oil Price Widget
Apple Mac OS X (version 10.4 and above) has this neat feature called dashboard. It lets tiny programs, called widgets, run as an overlay to your screen when you press ‘F12′. There are widgets that show the current time in any timezone, hurricane advisories, stock quotes, your computer’s vital stats, and much more.
I’ve got a certain desire to stay updated on the price oil, since it’s often related to world events. For instance, a spike in the oil price might mean a hurricane is headed towards the Gulf of Mexico or that there is more unrest in the Middle East. So to satisfy this urge for oil price updates, I’ve created the Oil Price Widget. It works on Mac OS X Tiger and gathers information from 321energy.com, which is displayed in a small window on the dashboard.
Download: Oil Price Widget.
Instructions: Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger is required. If you’re using Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, Show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget’s icon in the Widget Bar to open it. If you’re using a browser other than Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, unarchive it and place it in /Library/Widgets/ in your home folder. Show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget’s icon in the Widget Bar to open it.
August 2nd, 2007 at 05:30
gosh, this is way cool
December 22nd, 2007 at 03:21
this is really cool. very useful to me
January 6th, 2008 at 04:09
sorry about the above post, here is a better formatted one:
how about a Mac widget that will track the current US Dollar Index. ive seen the Forex Charts and FXTrade Ticker widgets, but they only compare and convert currencies.
the widget im looking for will track and chart the US Dollar Index from this site http://quotes.ino.com/chart/?s=NYBOT_DX&am…amp;t=l&a=0 and have the option to show either 1 Day, 5 Days, 1 Month, 3 Months, 6 Months or 1 Year. but if you can only code it to show 1 day then thats fine too. i think the data from that site is updated every 30 minutes, but im not too sure so if you have a better source by all means use it. another cool feature would be to have the day and time the data has been updated showing somewhere on the widget formatted as HH:MM am/pm - Month Day, Year (09:00 am - January 01, 2008). as for the graphic interface, something similar to your oil price widget would be fine (with the little \”i\” that will flip the widget to select the options).
please email me at fgraciano@roadrunner.com if you can create this. thanks in advance!
March 2nd, 2008 at 12:18
Oil will never go below $85 again. In 2010 oil will be over $250 a barrel and gas will be $10 a gallon. Even though reserves are rising which should make oil prices drop the fact they don’t drop in price is because the political tensions are rising. With that you will either buy a hybrid which will still be expensive to operate or ride your bike or take the public transit. There are ways to reduce your fuel cost.
March 2nd, 2008 at 22:59
Ah, the good ol’ days when oil was $77.60 a barrel. Maybe I should update my screenshot with one showing > $100 a barrel. The only way I can see oil going down (apart from temporary seasonal effects) is through a severe economic recession. So I’ve hedged my USO with some SDS. I’m currently at 2/3 of my money in USO and 1/3 in SDS.
May 8th, 2008 at 13:55
A great widget. I also appreciate looking at the download demo picture that has the price of oil at $77.60. A nice memory!
June 3rd, 2008 at 21:42
You know, it would be really a good idea to create a more general ‘commodities’ widget, which you could select whichever items (oil, corn, suger) that you were interested in tracking.
Oh, and you really should have an email somewhere listed on your website for sending in bug reports for your widgets.