Panic, makers of fine apps such as Transmit and Coda, have just released Status Board ($9.99, App Store link) which looks to be a sweet status board app for the iPad that you would hook up to an HDTV for offices and co-working spaces who want to display information about an app, project or just general internet goofiness in a shared space.
Widgets that are included for display are:
Clock and Weather are exactly what you expect. Calendar will display the events from one or more of your local iPad calendars, even Exchange. Mail can show you mailbox counts, list incoming messages, or graph message volume. Twitter can show you tweets as a ticker, or chart Twitter volume. RSS will show you the latest articles in a feed, or graph article volume.
There's also three pro widgets: Table, Chart, and Do-It-Yourself (which is a basic web view).
Playing with the Pro panels, however, made me reflect on the nature of Status Board and exactly the kind of market Panic is going after. Will individuals working from home be able to fully enjoy Status Board, or is this app aimed at teams sharing an office space where a large HDTV can act as a Status Board hub? Ultimately, is Status Board a playful dashboard for everyone or a data tracking tool for companies?
I think Status Board’s greatest strength is that it’s flexible. Its canvas may be limited to a handful of panels, but the possibilites are endless when it comes down to the combinations of data and services you can put together. Right now, the app is skewed towards the developer community with its three Pro panels (admittedly, the average App Store customer won’t like the idea of writing JSON files), but the six Instant ones should be enough to grant everyone a glimpse at Status Board’s full potential.