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April 6, 2007
Inspect Your Gadgets
Dear Larry,
What exactly are Windows gadgets and how do I get them?
S. N.
Dear S. N.,
Imagine a miniature analog clock keeping the time on your
desktop. Or a little calendar you can flip through. How about a tiny iTunes
controller that displays the song currently playing and allows you to pause,
play, fast forward, or rewind? Well, the objects I’m having you envision here
are called “gadgets” (or, in Yahoo parlance, “widgets”).
In effect, a “gadget” in the Windows environment has evolved
to be a generic term for a small graphical object that resides somewhere on your
Windows desktop and serves a specific purpose.
If you’re already a Windows Vista user, you know immediately
what I’m talking about. Gadgets are built into Windows Vista and usually reside
in the Windows Sidebar, a column of space reserved on one edge of your screen
(by default, the right edge). Gadgets vary in shape and size, and there are
hundreds of Vista-compatible gadgets to choose from. For example, I’ve
configured my Vista sidebar to contain an analog clock, a digital alarm clock
and countdown timer, a calendar, the current temperature and weather, a small
news reader, the aforementioned iTunes monitor, and a “post-it note” in which I
can jot some quick notes to myself.
Other popular gadgets include a miniature slide show of your
stored photos, a currency converter, an address book, a meter that monitors the
state of your computer, a calculator, a stock price tracker/ticker, and an eBay
gadget that tracks auctions of your choice. But if those don’t tickle your
fancy, like I said, there are many more out there that just might.
If you’re not yet running Windows Vista, you don’t have to
feel left out to dry. The other two big players in the gadget market are Google
and Yahoo. Google gadgets come as an add-on to Google’s Desktop Search program
(whose main purpose is to let you quickly search your computer for long lost
documents—a feature that is also built into the new Windows Vista). If you’re
interested in trying out Google Desktop Search and Google Gadgets, start by
visiting http://desktop.google.com. If,
on the other hand, you’re a Yahoo fan, go to
http://widgets.yahoo.com instead. Both programs work similarly as far as
gadgets are concerned, but Google’s also offers the search functionality. (Yahoo
has its own search program at
http://desktop.yahoo.com, but it’s separate from its Widgets program.) Both
the Google Gadget and Yahoo Widget programs are free.
If your computer is powerful enough, I would encourage you to
try playing with gadgets. You might never look at your Windows desktop in
exactly the same way ever again.
This is Larry Schneider, logging off.
