One of the features of the new Vista operating system I enjoy playing with is the sidebar. As far as I can tell, it’s a copy off of Google desktop sidebar. Be that as it may, I still like the Vista one and have a blast trying out new gadgets.
Here are the ones I find are not only fun but helpful.
Gmail Reader – Unlike a lot of the Gmail checker widgets out there, Gmail reader not only lets you know you’ve got a new message it lists the subjectline and sender name.
Notes (built into Vista) – better than the Google Desktop version, this notes app lets you add and subtract notes. You can also choose the color of your sticky notes. Notes are a quick way to jot something down without having to launch your word processor.
Marketers Toolkit – This cool gadget gives you a marketing tip of the day. Get the most out of Adwords, Adsense, setting budgets, creating a unique selling postion and much more. I find it makes for a good “tickler” file to remind me of marketing fundamentals as I work.
My Keywords – If you play the Adwords game you know you sink or swim based on your keyword selection. My keywords is a handy little gadget you can use to tap the best keyword suggestion sites (Wordtracker, Overture, SEOBOOK, and WMtalk).
Sphere Timer 1.0 – If you’ve been reading my blog for long, you know how much I like using countdown timers. Sphere Timer is right there at your fingertips. It also has more features than any other sidebar timer such as Unlimited Alarms, Alternable Countdown and CountUp and Milisseconds Chrnometer – plus you can choose your own alarm sounds and skins.
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Actually, Sidebars like Google’s, SmartBar XP, DesktopSidebar and others are actually based on the first iterations of public or semi-public demonstrations of WIndows Longhorn back in 2003. I’ve used SmartBarXP and DesktopSidebar (in fact, I still use it with XP X64). Google didn’t start the whole idea – if you want to get technical about it, you can look back to NeXTStep with it’s dock – which was actually called a “wharf” where objects can be docked and provide info such as system resources or contain fly-out menus of other dock-items like shortcuts to applications.
Hi Scott, I stand corrected. I wasn’t aware these all originated with Longhorn. Thanks for pointing it out.
Actually, the concept goes back further than Longhorn. From the original Mac operating system on up until System 7, [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desk_Accessory]Desk Accessories[/url] were part of the OS. From then on up until OS X, [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stickies]Stickies[/url] were a very widely used desktop mini-app.
More recently, Mac OS Tiger introduced [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashboard_(software)]Dashboard[/url], which also uses Widgets, including a new version of the original Stickies.
Well, nobody would ever accuse Microsoft from stealing ideas from Apple would they????
Hi! I’m the developer of the Sphere Timer Gadget, and I’m here to thank you very much for this article. I’m very happy for having found this.
thanks again,
Rogério
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