Screenlets!!

So a few weeks ago I had an idea. What if my computer's "desktop" was not just a dumping ground for files that I occasionally use? What if, instead, it could contain a set of tools that helped me get stuff done and find the documents I need? In an attempt to feel this idea out I removed all of the links, icons and files from my desktop and installed some widgets provided by the Screenlets projet. I've been using a collection of screenlets on my Desktop both at home and at work for about a week now and I'm generally happy with how things are working out. Here are the screenelts I currently use:

Places: Shows me my bookmarked folders so I can quickly get to a file manager view for my most valued folders.

Google Search: Allows me to quickly search Google for whatever I need at the moment. I Just type in the box and hit enter. I am shortly greeted by a Firefox window with my search results.

Wikipedia Search: Like Google search but for Wikipedia :)

Count Down Clock: It is used to track the time remaining until some event in the future. This one is more of a novelty as it is not really productive, however it is still very important. Right now I'm using it to count down to the birth date of my daughter, Emilie. :) One day she'll be a Linux user. :-P

Disk Usage: Shows me how much disk space I have left. This is nice because I can see when I'm running out of disk space and I can remedy the problem before it gets out of hand.

Weather: Shows the weather, customized for my area. This is useful for knowing if I can go biking or if my time would be better spent inside working (or wasting time) on my computer.

Given all these super cool screenlets I was completely puzzled by the lack of availability of two screenlets:

Folder view: Much like the default KDE Plasmoid of the same name, I envision a folder view screenlet that would show me the contents of a folder. Sure I can have this with Nautilus window but I want it built directly into my desktop but confined to a single window unlike my current Gnome desktop so my files stay in the space that I allocate for them.

Recently Used Documents: A screenlet to show recently used documents, preferably as tracked by Gnome. It seems so obviously useful! I would have expected this long before the places screenelt. Well, I wanted this one so much that, in true free and open source software spirit, I wrote it myself. It was fun because I got to learn the screenlets API and the Python programming language. I started with the Places screenlet and modified the code to do what I needed. Then I continued to improve the code and add features until I was happy enough to live with the results. I've uploaded the screenlet to Gnome Look in hopes that others can benefit from my work.