PEMDAS received an Apple Design Award tonight! It was runner-up in the Dashboard Widgets category. It's pretty crazy to be listed on the same page as some of the other great apps, and it's amazing to even get runner-up with all the other great widgets out there.

It was also really awesome to go up on stage and receive the award, but at the same time, it felt weird to be the only one up there, since so many others have contributed to the development process. There have been great suggestions from everyone who's taken the time to submit feedback, bug reports, and then tested it out, and also the people I've talked to about how to improve the interface, and bounced ideas off of... the list goes on, and I wanted to thank everyone for that. You've all been an enormous help in making sure that the widget gets better and better with every release.

So, now, the big question: what's next?

Well, a little history first. PEMDAS started out as a test so I could play around with Dashboard. I wanted to write a calculator, since I didn't like many of the other calculators out there. As it became more feature complete, I posted it up on my video-related website (that's the reason for the DonkeyEntertainment.com name, for anyone wondering... I'll try to think of something better at some point).

Anyways, I posted it up primarily because I was curious to see what would happen. After all, it's a calculator -- it was something I needed, but I wasn't sure what the demand from the rest of the world would be like. I hoped maybe a couple other people would find it as useful as I did, which would be great.

Then, of course, a lot more people than I expected started to use it. And then I received a lot of feedback on it. And now it's received a developer award (!).

Even though it's only a year old, PEMDAS is starting to feel a little more mature. There are still a lot of features I plan on adding, but the general idea for the widget isn't going to change too much. It's always been a quick way to let anyone do calculations with formulas.

So, I think it might be time for another test to play around with some things, just to see what happens. I've been keeping it quiet, but over the past couple months, I've ported the widget to Cocoa, and I've been working on a full blown app. With an app, you get a lot more screen real estate to work with, as well as some other things that are nice to have. And I've been thinking about a lot of ways to have the widget and the app integrate together, so they should complement each other beautifully.

I wish I could talk more about it, but to be completely honest, I'm not sure when it will be ready, or in what form, and the last thing I want to do is start talking about vaporware. The important thing is that it's moving past the concept stage, and I'm happy with where it's going. I just wanted to throw that out there, since between the award and the one-year-anniversary coming up in a couple days, now seem as good a time as any to mention it.

And that about wraps all the news for today. Again, thanks to everyone who's used the widget, sent me feedback, and helped me out along the way, and keep an eye out for more great things to come!