There's no guarantee a dash cam will save the day if you're ever in a car accident, but if you want one just in case, it's good to know what kinds are out there and how they work. Here's what you should look for when you shop for a dash cam of your own.

Considering the Raspberry Pi's a mini computer, it should come as no surprise one of the more common projects is a dashboard-style display. Over on GitHub, DIYer n0bel has a guide to turning the Pi into a smart clock.

Android: Car dashboard apps are easy to come by, but hard to do well. AutoMate manages to pull it off, with an easy-to-use dashboard of handy features that help make driving easier.

Mac OS X: Free download Dock Unlocker puts an end to accidentally removing app shortcuts from the dock and not realising it until you see the puff of smoke. The app allows you to lock and unlock the dock with a single click, thanks to a dashboard widget.

If your first stop after opening up your web browser is to load up various Google Apps, Gpanion is a sleek dashboard interface for all your favourites.

Windows only: The creator of Kludgets, a new open-source widget engine, admits it's not quite pretty, but it "copies the best features" of similar gadgets on OS X, Yahoo, and Google platforms.

Mac OS X only: Donationware application Organized is a Dashboard widget that integrates with your system notes, events, and to-dos, providing you with quick access to all of your activities. Made by the folks who brought you previously mentioned iStat Menus, Organized boasts an attractive interface and impressive feature set. The widget integrates with iCal and Mail for managing your events, notes, and to-dos, which is great, but the biggest disappointment is that it only comes in Dashboard widget form (as opposed to iStat menus, which is either a widget or menu bar app). Organized is donationware, requires OS X 10.5. Thanks Jason! Organized

Quick Mac tip: If you're even a semi-regular Dashboard user, you've probably been irritated by the three-step process involved in removing a widget from Dashboard: You click the plus (+) sign in the corner, which brings up an "X" on all the widgets, you click the "X" to close the widget, and then you click the plus sign again to return things to normal. Annoying, yes? Weblog TUAW points out a simple trick to prevent this Dashboard annoyance: Just hold down your Option key when you hover over the widget you want to close. The "X" button appears, you click it, hassle averted. This quick turnaround is especially handy if you use multiple versions of expiring widgets, like the most excellent Delivery Status widget. Mac 101: faster widget management

Mac OS X only: Dashquit is an elegant response to an niggling issue many Mac users have known for years—that the Dashboard widget screen, while awfully convenient sometimes, can also be a memory-sucker. When activated, the Dashquit widget shows you how much memory the Dashboard feature is using at the moment, and offers a big, bold "Stop" button to shut it down (after confirmation). It's basically a graphical way to perform the terminal commands that shut down Dashboard, which is going to be a lot more convenient for many folks with less memory. Dashquit 3.0 is a free Leopard-only download and uses 50% less memory than it predecessors, but a 10.4-friendly version can also be found at the link. Dashquit 3.0

Leopard only: A lesser-hyped feature in Mac 10.5 is Web Clips—the ability to turn a section of any web page into a Dashboard widget. We're not huge fans of gadgets and widgets around here, but Dashboard Web Clips can be a big timesaver, because it lets you check several pages you might otherwise manually refresh throughout the day in one keystroke, no browser required.

Mac OS X only: The entirety of Google Gadgets is now available for Mac users as Dashboard widgets through Google Desktop for Mac. Altogether this isn't groundbreaking, since you could use the new web clips feature in Leopard or the Widgetops Universal Google Gadget widget to add any Google Gadget to your Dashboard, but it's a nice integration nonetheless. If you're a Google Gadget lover, let's hear your favourites in the comments.

Google Desktop for Mac