InsideMicrosoft

Some Good Windows Vista Sidebar Gadgets, Issue 3

Yet again, I present you with a rundown of new Vista Sidebar Gadgets. Enjoy!

The Videobox Gadget presents videos from MSN Soapbox, letting you watch them real tiny in the Sidebar, or full size when undocked. You can choose a category or a search to track. It appears to suffer from some programming errors.

The QuickShop Gadget presents a variety of products you can but from a store that appears to exist entirely within the Sidebar Gadget. No guesses as to how this guy monitizes :-). All purchases appear to be at Dell.com, for some reason. The interface is stunning.

The Google Calendar Gadget lets you choose a Google Calendar and view it in your Sidebar, but only after you click the “View” button. This is bad, because you don’t get to see the calendar at a glance, but good, because it is a rare Gadget that doesn’t explode in size when undocked (the previous two are awful offenders).

The Torrent Wrangler Gadget lets you search 5 bit torrent trackers (Pirate Bay, ISO Hunt, Torrent Spy, Bittorrent and Mininova) from the Sidebar. You can also add search engines (including, presumably, non torrent engines), set a default engine, and set how results open in your browser.

The Petfinder Gadget shows you different pets available for adoption. You can limit the pets shown by state and/or type of pet. I set it to dogs, naturally.

The Amazon.com Search Gadget by Scrappy_XII launches Amazon searches in your browser, from the Sidebar. Not terribly convenient, but at least it looks nice.

The Googlebar + YouTube Gadget lets you search Google web search, YouTube, Images, News, Maps and Groups by launching searches from the Sidebar. Because searches open in the browser, its relatively useless, and the fact that the web search is an AdSense search page makes it even worse.

The ZipGadget lets you find a zip code by entering an address. You need to enter a complete address, or you get nothing, but otherwise it works perfectly. Small, simple.

The Amazon Search Gadget by MikeCannell actually shows you the results in the Gadget, with a product image and title, price, and savings. Very useful, and much better than the other one.

The Digg Gadget by clunder1981 shows the top five stories on Digg, the number of Diggs, and refreshes at an interval set by the user. It does not let you choose a category, and that alone is a dissapointment.

The Nixie Clock Gadget is too wide and breaks out of the sidebar, and also blinks, once every second. It is annoying and doesn’t even look that good.

Microsoft has released an official Windows Live Search Gadget, which lets you search Windows Live Search, specific websites, and search Macros, all from a single, small, nicely designed Gadget. Searches occur in a slide-out window, and there are even ads in the Gadget, making it kind of a mini Windows Live Search software program.

The Wordpress Gadget by PTeyDK gives you quick links to important control panel pages on your blog from the Sidebar. They run in your default browser, not the Gadget.

The NBA Scoreboard Gadget shows the latest scores and results from around the NBA. It does not get too huge when undocked, and clicking the games opens results on NBA.com. That said, it has the runtime error bug, and doesn’t have a way to scroll down past the first seven games shown (as far as I know).

The Remote Desktop Gadget is a quick and tiny launchpad for pre-chosen Remote Desktop sessions. If you heavily used RDP, this could be extraordinarily useful.

The Threat Level Gadget shows the latest terror threat level from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Previously:
Issue 1
Issue 2

March 15th, 2007 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Sidebar, Vista, Windows | 5 comments