The Dashboard widget xCuts is a keyboard shortcuts reference that lets you easily browse the shortcuts for Mac OS X, Quicksilver and more.

A recent update adds a section for switchers, which gives them easy access to the Mac OS X equivalents for the Windows shortcuts they already know.

To save space, the widget can be collapsed to the small size of the graphic in the top right of this post. When you need it, click on it to expand to the full interface:

Searches can be focussed by category, scope and object. The magic is powered by a MySQL database, accessed over the web with Ajax.

xCuts is freeware and is available from the developer’s web site .

[Thanks, Adrian]

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“For Apple to make fun of Microsoft copying the idea of their “widgets” into “gadgets” is so unbelievably hippocratic that it makes me sick.”

[Spotted in the Dashboard section here ]

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With the SwiftMail Dashboard widget, you can quickly dash off an email using your Gmail, .Mac, Yahoo or AOL email account.

It offers a quick username and password setup or the option of entering detailed server information.

The widget saves the last five subject lines and the recipients in drop-down boxes to the right of the fields:

Call me a pre-Tiger throw-back if you like, but I don’t see the point of these email widgets.

It’s no faster than switching to Mail.app or using Quicksilver to dash off the note.

Perhaps it is faster than switching to Entourage or Thunderbird or the web-based interface of those services.

You can get the freeware widget from the developer’s web site .

UPDATE: Once briefly QuickMail before becoming SwiftMail (briefly), the widget is now called “DashMail” (for the moment).

[Via TUAW ]

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Reminder is a useful little Dashboard widget that allows you to create quick reminders to yourself in iCal, rather like a local version of the Reminders feature in Backpack .

Entering the reminder is easy.

After installation, just call up the Dashboard, enter the time after which you want the reminder and a summary of whatever you need to remember:

A reviewer on dashboardwidgets.com says, “Just the most useful widget so far for me!”

Reminder is freeware and is available from the developer’s web site

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Mail Widget is a Dashboard widget that checks one user-specified POP, IMAP or .Mac account every time the Dashboard is loaded, even when Mail is not running.

A new version released this week runs on PowerPC and Intel Macs. It is also a smaller file, due to more efficient compression of its audio contents for voice notifications.

MailWidget is freeware and available from the developer’s web site .

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Google has released three new widgets , one for Blogger, one for searching with Google and one for Gmail.

The Gmail widget polls your account and displays the sender, title and (optionally) a short snippet of the message:

Further options allow you to display only messages matching a particular label.

[Via TUAW ]

Clicking on the Inbox or Compose buttons takes you to the relevant screen in Gmail’s web interface.

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