Ross Rubin (@rossrubin) contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.
One of the challenges for companies trying to build across the "three screens" of the television, PC and cell phone is adapting their distinctive technologies to those platforms. Apple showed strong early momentum on the Mac with its widget architecture, but is falling behind some rivals in bringing glanceable utility to other platforms. Introduced with Mac OS X Tiger, Dashboard widgets (or "gadgets" as Google and Microsoft call them) are small, simple applets intended to convey quick bits of information or provide a quick change of settings. Veteran Mac
