I think the new calendar widget is very cool. I was showing it to Terri this morning, but she was less impressed. We brainstormed a bit on what would make it better.
The primary issue is that it does not update immediately. I actually sort of like this, since I know it takes a minute or two for the system clock to update. However, it *does* make it look broken. Maybe better user feedback could be provided by graying out the time and making it slowly flash between the current set time and the upcoming new time, until the change has gone through.
Another issue is that the times for London and Portland are confusing. The clock icon shows the time in London, but the text is in local time. (Sometimes the text date/time doesn't show up immediately.)
It would also be handy if the text were selectable, so you can copy and paste the date and times into other things.
The 'Set' button has a couple problems. First, while I like that it de-clutters the interface to not have it shown by default, when it pops in it causes the applet to resize horizontally, causing the right dozen pixels or so to display offscreen, sometimes even when 'Set' is not shown. There should be no resizing. Second, I think instead of a discrete button, the clock icon ought to be the button that sets the default.
I really like the map. Terri didn't get at first why half of it was shaded, but when I explained that it illustrated day and night she thought it was a cool feature. Maybe it could be made more intuitively obvious... (maybe with a tiny sun and moon icons?)
I flipped on display of the weather, and I *love* this feature. However, Terri pointed out that the icons are quite confusing. It's foggy in Portland right now, but the icon is a gray-to-white gradient which did not speak "fog" to us (I actually wondered if the display was broken.) The weather in London is clear, and a full moon is shown, but that's confusing - is it trying to tell me that it's a full moon in London? (No, it's shown the same icon all week, plus we don't really need to know the phase of the moon.)
There is an option to turn on display of seconds. This does affect the main time display on gnome-panel, but in the applet I sort of expected a second hand on the clocks, and seconds shown in their date/time text.
I also wonder if the clock icon is themeable. This is pure unnecessary eye candy, but the current clocks are, well, rather boring. ;-)