Personal Dashboard: Klipfolio

I’m not a big fan of having a lot of clutter on my desktop, unless it is going to be useful.  For that reason, I don’t like sidebars like the Vista sidebar and the Google sidebar.  Most of the widgets are not useful enough to me to take up the screen space and system resources.  However, I decided to take a look at Klipfolio (mentioned on Ghacks), which is a very customizable, personal dashboard.

In a way, Klipfolio is like one of the sidebars mentioned above.  You can add different “Klips”, which are the equivalent of widgets.  These Klips range from displaying the weather to displaying the latest Youtube videos.  Klipfolio comes with a decent amount of Klips already installed, but you may find more on the website.  One of my personal favorite Klips is the To Do List.  I like being able to have my To Do List in plain view so that I make sure I see it everyday.

Klipfolio is set by default to be just a window with your Klips.  The individual Klips may be moved around the screen, or snapped back into position beside the others.  If you drag the Klipfolio window to one of the sides of the screen, it will dock itself to that side.  I currently have mine docked to the bottom since my taskbar is on the right side of my screen.  You can also have it set to reserve screen space so that your maximized windows do not cover it.

I like the simplicity in Klipfolio, and I like how it doesn’t waste much space.  The space that it uses can be filled however you wish.  Each Klip can be resized to a size that you like, and if you want to expand a Klip to see more all you have to do is click on the expand button.  I’ve been using Klipfolio for the past few days, and it seems like one of those pieces of software that may stick around for a while on my desktop.