I should have mentioned long ago that DBW has changed their policy on P2P widgets. More details.
How do you get this traffic graph over the first two weeks of July? Write a Dashboard widget, apparently.
My Azureus Dashboard Widget has been downloaded over 2300 times in only a few days, according to my logs, without being listed on Apple’s widget page or on DashboardWidgets.com. (We’ll come back to that.) It has, however, been posted on VersionTracker and MacUpdate. From there, I suppose, a Digg user saw it and posted it; it shot onto Digg’s front page. Someone else added it to del.icio.us; before long it was on the popular links page. It got posted on The Unofficial Apple Weblog and DownloadSquad.
A lot of the feedback I’m getting has a common theme. One e‐mail said, “I rarely find widgets useful but this one is an exception. Great work!” A comment on VersionTracker states, “I knew Dashboard could do more than show me the weather.” TUAW said, “For the most part, I think widgets that merely serve as a Dashboard face for a non‐Dashboard program are useless. Not the case with this one…” It’s gratifying to know that I’m not the only one who thinks that most widgets don’t do anything.
The Dashboard Programming Guide has a section on design conventions:
Design your widget to have a discrete functionality. It should require no explanation or configuration. Instead of creating a widget that does three things, try creating three widgets that do one thing each. This makes each task discrete and lets your users choose what is useful for them.
I agree with the idea of a widget doing one thing well. The problem I have is that a lot of widgets I see seem to do zero things well, or one thing poorly.
Half of all widgets I come across either (a) check your GMail account or (b) count down to some event, like the Longhorn launch date or Burning Man. The redundant efforts are disheartening. A large chunk of the remaining widgets simply duplicate some sort of functionality that’s present in a web browser. I think the Wikipedia widget is very well done, and obviously there are those who find it valuable, but I don’t get it. I have a web browser for visiting web sites. Others recreate old video games, or display webcam images, or show album art. These are among the most popular widgets in Apple’s directory, but they’re not enough to keep plenty of Tiger users from disabling the dashboard entirely with utilities like DashOnOff.
As I mentioned earlier, my widget has not been added to Apple’s directory or to DashboardWidgets.com. I submitted to both sites on Thursday. I don’t know the status of the Apple submission, but late Thursday night I got an e‐mail from DBW:
Uh oh, I’m really sorry about this Andrew but we can’t accept that widget. It’s DBW policy to reject all P2P‐related content. Again, I’m very sorry :(
I wrote back:
Might I respectfully inquire as to the rationale of this rule? My widget is not a BitTorrent client, nor does it condone or in anyway simplify the process of copyright infringement. All of the items in my screenshot, for example, are legal downloads.
Do you fear legal retribution? From whom? If it were legally precarious to host BitTorrent *clients* for download, many web sites would be in trouble, including some of your competitors. And, as I’ve stated, my widget isn’t even a BitTorrent client. It’s useless without Azureus, which is downloaded elsewhere.
I’m pressing on this issue only because I’ve put a lot of hard work into this widget and I’m proud of it. DBW is where I go for widgets, and I know I’m not the only one, and I feel like my widget deserves to be seen, downloaded, and judged by the DBW community.
I’m not sure how tall the organizational ladder is over there, and I appreciate how polite and apologetic you’ve been, but it seems to me that policies can be changed, or at least handled on a case‐by‐case basis. Without knowing your rationale it’s hard not to view this decision as arbitrary.
I didn’t get a reply until today:
We decided early on that we did not want to promote piracy in any way, choosing to exclude widgets related to P2P, BitTorrent, etc. While the items in the screenshot are legal downloads, the main use (though usually unpublished) for BitTorrent is illegal downloading.
Again, I’m very sorry about this. I completely understand the amount of work that goes into a widget, especially one as complex as yours. Sadly, though, we just can’t accept it.
I’m not going to get into the BitTorrent controversy, nor will I enumerate the many legitimate uses for BT. Others have said it better. But I’d like to higlight this widget as an example of the sort of thing that passes through DBW’s submission gauntlet: it displays Goku (from Dragon Ball Z). That’s it.
There’s a whole section full of “decorative” widgets at DashboardWidgets.com. Somehow I have the feeling that this isn’t what Apple had in mind when they created Dashboard. I don’t mean to pick on the Dragon Ball widget’s author. I do, however, wish to ask the DBW staff why their moral objection to piracy is seemingly more important than a moral objection to mediocrity.
My widget does not encourage or condone piracy. More to the point, though, it does something. It solves a problem. It’s not perfect — I’ve got a whole lot of stuff to fix/add for version 0.2 — but it is among the most ambitious widgets I’ve seen. It took forever to write and went through about eight or nine different versions of limited release before I deemed it good enough to release to the public.
I am not mad at the DBW staff; my contact with them has been cordial. But I did want to let people know why my widget isn’t on their site and leave it up to each individual to decide whether or not my widget’s exclusion is unfair.
Update: After I used Apple’s feedback form to complain about the fact that one cannot check on the status of a pending submission, Apple wrote a rather snooty message back:
Due to the amount of submissions we recieve, we do not have the bandwidth to contact submitters directly. When you submit your software, your submission is subject to review. Apple reserves the right to omit, edit, or reject submissions.
We chose not to highlight Azureus as it supports BitTorrent (which could possibly be used for illegal file sharing).
I never really expected Apple to accept my submission, but it stings nonetheless.
Comments
I dunno man, that dbz widget…
Even though I don’t use Azureus that much, I still find that this widget is one of the best created, next to Hula Girl and Jared.
The sites have to lay down rules to stand on, though. It sucks that such a functional widget won’t see the as many users. Have you thought about running it by the Azureus creators?
Fuckers. In the same way that BitTorrent can be used for piracy, HTTP or FTP can be used for piracy, do you see Apple or DBW rejecting all widgets that use HTTP? It’s stupid, and they’re missing out on an awesome widget because of this policy.
Yeah, suicide truck bombs can be used for heaps and heaps of useful purposes, too many to enumerate (but I can start… demolishing abandoned buildings, blasting for mining purposes…)
Who in their right mind would want to ban suicide truck bombs?
We chose not to highlight Azureus as it supports BitTorrent (which could possibly be used for illegal file sharing).
I always loved responces like this (in fact i’m going though with it with my ISP right now!) if they are’t posting it because BitTorrent could possibly be used for illegal file sharing, they’d better pull safari. (http is still used a whole lot for that sort of shit) and the finder. (it has FTP access, and SMB/CIFS access) and the terminal. (also has FTP access) oh and Mac OS X as a whole. (you can never be TOO sure)
Well i almost died when i couldn’t locate this program on the apple widget site… thank god 4 google… though most widgets ARE useless this one is most definitely an exception lol as for the hula widget though i engoyed having a hulling homer on my dashboard i had to kick him off and throw him on the street after seeing how many system resorces his fat ass consumed, well he was cute though lol…
GREAT job with the azureus thing though keep that stuff coming lol widgets SHOULD serve a purpose!!!!
(sorry 4 picking on homer if you did that but his willy antics and gyrations were using up 4 whole Kb and as both of my processors are usually running at 100% 24/7 i just couldn’t allow that.)
The policy of DBW and Apple is a perfect example of the illogical mentality that seems to be shared by the majority of people who have the most influence over our society….sadness.
I use your widget and the calculator as they’re the only widgets worth invoking the dashboard for. Great job and kudos on all your hard work. If web traffic becomes an issue for downloads, let me know. I’d be happy to mirror.
I can’t believe those pius bastards feel that not having anything to do with P2P some how exonerates them. If apple wanted to stop users from using P2P they would build some sort of outgoing port limiter into the OS. With the attitude they have if anybody uses any product they make to illegally download anything it is on their backs.
How does Azureus, Limwire, Donkey or any other P2P client work on an Apple in the first place? At least microsoft can blame a thousand hackers and open-source project for windows being able to dload anything.
Maybe thet are still pissed over what Apple thought was a clever plan with the Ipod only getting music from itunes. Ha, ha, ha that lasted about 6-months. Now everyone with a brain can load whatever they want.
Why don’t you re-write it for win32 and submit to konfabulator? They already have bittorrent widgets available but none for Az. If you made the code open source either the guys at sourceforge.net or somewhere will chip in. Or adapt it as a plug-in. Hell for that much write a firefox extenion.
If you need an intro to AZ on sourceforge I am a member and can hook you up. Good work figuringout a way to better a powerful program like AZ.
Wait a second now, there’s an aMule and an mlNet widget on there. How come they get through and not yours?
mate. this widget is fucking brilliant. i have been using that damn swing web interface for too long and now this beautiful piece of work. thank you very much. thank you!
You, sir, have made a wonderful widget. Despite DBW.com’s rejection, I found your widget okay, as did many others, and I’m impressed.
I run Azureus on my headless Linux box and being to check up on it from your widget is a huge bonus. I only hope that more apps in future offer an HTML interface so that clever boffins like yourself can make Widgets for them.
I can understand your disappointment with DBW.com seeing as you made a widget better than almost all on the site. Even I got my Liverpool FC widget listed there, but it’s JARSSR (just another RSS reader). On the other hand, I can understand their decision to reject all P2P widgets. It was probably not on the advice of lawyers, but they presumably think they have enough to deal with without being sued by the RIAA.
Love the Widget!! :D :D Thanks Drew!
Love the widget… I used to use chicken of the vnc to admin azureus on my headless B&W G3. With this now all I have to do is pop dashboard up to see how my downloads are progressing.
Heck its alll automated now. I connect to the server and drop the torrent in the download folder, which I have azureus check every 5 minutes for files to auto start. Then use the widget to control them. Then connect to the server and pull the files to my laptop when done.
Now if you added the ability to upload and start torrents remotely it would be one less step for me :D
This world is just full of uptight assholes who like rules for the sake of rules.
This widget looks awesome, I’m glad I found it and your site.
Is no-one else noting the irony of that pointless character image widget also being a blatant case of copyright infringement? As are the many that reproduce content from the likes of the BBC etc’s websites, often using branding that suggests it is official.
Obviously some piracy is good, as long as you don’t mention the p2p bogey-man.
Greg: perhaps you should try dragging the torrent onto the frog… ;)
I know someone already brought this up, but I wanted to second it. The offical Azureus site would most likely be happy to point out this file, and probably even provide a mirror. I wouldn’t worry about too many people missing out on your hard work though, as the Google ranking is fairly high so people are looking for it, or at least at it, and P2P users tend to be pretty smart over all (well, depends on the protocal, I think BitTorrent users are generally more tech savvy than Kazaa users).
Yeah, dbw has amule. How is that different?
For the record, DashboardWidgets changed its policy on P2P-related content on August 5, 2005. Mr. Dupont was informed of this policy change via email and was invited to submit the widget to DBW. When we did not receive a response, we assumed he was declining our invitation, something, quite frankly, I can’t blame him for.
powermac99: I never got that email, for whatever reason. If I had, I’d have likely resubmitted my widget and edited this post to include said invitation. I may get around to it sooner or later, but at any rate thanks for the note.
Wonder if these people realise that music, film and software piracy would not exist without computers or the internet, or DVD and CD burners,or videorecorders, or cassette and reel-to-reel recorders…. ban technology. Let’s go back to writing books by hand and give the monks work to do.
Get real guys!
Love the look and feel of your widget: it is exactly what I was looking for! Thanks! My only question is whether you are willing to have it ported to WinXP…