Good Windows Vista Sidebar Gadgets - Issue 9
Continue the tradition, the ninth edition of my reviews of the newest Windows Vista Sidebar Gadgets. Coming soon: Issue 10, which will be followed by an “all-time” best of special issue.
Windows Vista Sidebar Gadgets Issue 9 Hosted on Zooomr
The MSN Movies Gadget shows the latest movie trailers available at MSN, but it only links to the video pages at MSN.
The NTVMSNBC.com Turkey News Gadget shows the latest news from Turkey. You can make it smaller and pick a category, but it’s all in Turkish (wonder why? 
).
The My Documents Gadget doesn’t do anything, it just opens my documents in a new window when you click it, and looks like the icon. Yawn. I should follow Paul’s advice and stop calling these “good” Gadget.
The SayaTV Gadget (the big one) lets you watch TV on SayaTV, an “internet TV social network”, directly in the Gadget. You’ll have to install an IE add-in, but it looks compelling and promising, if there are good channels. I found a stream of the Singapore Fashion Festival.
The Zune Gadget is a cool Windows Media Player remote Gadget, shaped and interfaced like a Zune. You can use it as though the Zune had a touch screen, thankfully. One problem: The background is messed up and transparent, making it look pink and weird, instead of properly showing a user-selected image.
The Drugstore.com Explorer shows you products available on drugstore.com, all within the Gadget. It only shows one product at a time, but works well.
The Garfield of the Day Gadget shows today’s Garfield comic strip, except it’s too big for the Sidebar and too small to read on its own, even undocked. You click it to view the strip full-size, which begs the question of why they didn’t size it right. At least you can click to see older strips as well.
The Chris Pirillo Live Gadget shows the live feed of Chris Pirillo’s “lifecast” from UStream.
The Babe Slide Show Gadget has been updated to version 2, and the new version resizes when undocked, has better transitions, and randomizes the photo order. However, it still eats up over 140 megabytes of RAM, so watch out!
Previously:
Issue 1
Issue 2
Issue 3
Issue 4
Issue 5
Issue 6
Issue 7
Issue 8
[…] Issue 9 of his regular series includes a mish-mash of the latest gadgets to be released. The SayaTV Gadget is interesting - in that it’s the first to offer live TV from the Sidebar. […]
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