Amazon Sidebar Tool

Amazon Sidebar Tool is a new gadget release that integrates with Amazon to allow you to search for items, view details, view their pictures, add them to the cart, and then purchase that cart direct from Amazon all right from your sidebar. The idea is to have an Amazon search bar waiting in your sidebar for when you want to check on an item. When you have something to search for, simply type it in and hit enter and the gadget will grow to full size and display all the search results. You can hover over an item to view more details or double click to open a flyout with loads of information about the item including reviews, a list of sellers and a picture browser.

It basically has everything you could ever want from an Amazon search gadget, way better than all those basic search box gadgets that seem to be cluttering up the Live Gallery lately.

If you have any suggestions or issues please leave a comment below or check out the forums.

Features:

• Search and view items with detailed overviews, image gallery and reviews
• View marketplace sellers for each item and add any seller's item to the cart
• Buy items in your cart from the Amazon Website
• Supports Amazon USA, UK, Canada, Germany, France and Japan
• Choose individual search categories and sorting methods for search
• Amazon Sidebar Tool resizes to your liking, just grab the bottom-right corner
• Double-click the Gadget frame to toggle mini-search mode

Download

More Details

Server Ping Update

Server Ping Pro has been updated once again to version 1.95 now with an audible alarm when a servers ping response time falls below the Orange threshold or the server fails. I've also right-aligned all the ping times (when you're not using the LED mode) to make the gadget look nicer.

All current users of Server Ping Pro will be emailed the new update shortly.

 Purchase Server Ping Pro

Now Playing 4.04 (beta)

Download

This version is for people who have trouble with iTunes or Foobar not updating. I've changed a few things in the code that may or may not help, unfortunately as I can't reproduce this issue it's difficult to fix it. If you still have trouble, in the settings there's a new option "Enable failsafe". This option will refresh the gadget every 30 seconds and check if the track has changed manually.

Let me know how things go and report any problems in the comments below.

My T-Mobile gadget updated

I've just released a small update to the My-Tmobile gadget that shows you your remaining FlexT allowance. The update fixes the gadget after T-Mobile changed a few things on their website.

Download

Server Ping Updates

I've just released an update to Server Ping (1.43) to fix the issue with some locales who were unable to enter IP addresses and could only ping server names/domains. Download the update to fix this issue.

Also, I quietly released an update to Server Ping Pro (1.8) a few days ago to add support for different thresholds for Green and Orange LEDs showing how long the server takes to respond to pings. To get the update simply re-download Server Ping Pro from the link in the email I sent you.

Server Ping Download

Server Ping Pro

Now Playing + iTunes 7.7

I've been receiving reports lately from users saying they're having trouble getting the Now Playing gadget to recognise songs they're playing in the new iTunes. I've personally tested NP on my laptop (which has never had iTunes installed before) and it works fine. If anyone else has iTunes 7.7 working with Now Playing could you drop a comment to let me know.

If users are still having trouble I recommend repairing or uninstalling/re-installing your iTunes installation as this has fixed issues in the past when other iTunes updates appear to have broken compatibility with the gadget

Nvision SideShow Competition Reminder

Just a reminder that the Nvision SideShow competition ends tomorrow (July 18th). The four finalists will receive a trip to the US for the Nvision 2008 event and the winner will be picked there by judges and will receive a Dell XPS 420 computer with a SideShow screen built-in.

I've submitted my entry, Computer Status. It's a combined Sidebar and Sideshow gadget that displays information about things like your ram and processor usage and how much battery life you have remaining or what WiFi networks you're connected to. The SideShow part is very basic as I haven't made any SideShow gadgets before but the Sidebar part is complete. It doesn't require a SideShow device to work however, you can run it simply as a sidebar gadget as shown below. I may be doing some updates to this in the future so I'll be sure to keep you posted on the blog.

Gadget Download

Competition Homepage

Windows Slideshow for Windows Mobile

A few days ago the much anticipated Slideshow for Windows Mobile application was release to the public as a Developers preview. I've had a chance to try this out on my WinMo device (a HTC Hermes) and i must say it is pretty damn awesome, it only comes with a few gadgets out of the box but it works really well.

Out of the box you can view your currently playing track in WMP including album art, change tracks, play/pause and change volume etc. There's also a great Powerpoint gadget which lets you view your slides and control the presentation right form your windows mobile device. You can also view your Outlook 2007 Calendar, but that's not much use when you already have it on your phone anyway.

Even if you're not that into gadgets, if you give presentations regularly I'd definitely try out the Powerpoint remote .

Get it here

Indexer Status Sidebar Gadget

Brandon Paddock, who works on the Windows Shell Team at Microsoft, wrote cool gadget that shows you the status of your Windows Search Indexer. It lets you know how many items you have indexed, how many are left to be indexed and you can stop and start the indexer right from the gadget.

Download here.

Is Microsoft serious about gadgets?

Consider the following:

1. Many groups within Microsoft have blogs where they talk about what's going on in the group, give advise on programming, etc, but some groups are more involved with their readers that others. The last post to the Windows Vista Sidebar Blog is dated July 31, 2007 and the Windows Live Gadget Blog is dated June 27, 2006.
2. Most of the top players in Microsoft's Live.com group (the innovators of web gadgets) have either left the company or moved on to other groups within Microsoft.
3. At Microsoft's MIX08 conference in Las Vegas, I did not hear the word "gadget" uttered once by any panel member or during the keynote.
4. Code Focus magazine that came in the MIX08 goodie bag focused on Windows Live. There were articles on Live Search, Live ID and Live Writer but nothing on Live.com or web gadgets.
5. Internet Explorer 8 beta 1 was released not long ago at MIX08 in Las Vegas. During one of the IE8 sessions I asked Chris Wilson, Platform Architect and long time IE team veteran how the new features of IE8 would effect Vista Sidebar. He didn't really have a good answer for me. I also asked him if the Windows Vista Sidebar team still exists. His response was "I'm not sure" which prompted several chuckles from the audience. Some have stated online that the Sidebar team has in fact been disbanded.
6. Over the past year, Google has announced support for Open Social Gadgets and Google Gadgets Ads. During the same period of time, Microsoft's gadget innovations include (insert sound of crickets chirping here).
7. And what may be the most telling... there are currently 53 Windows Vista Sidebar bugs listed on Jon Abbott's unofficial Windows Vista Sidebar bug list. Windows Vista SP1 was released to manufacturing and not one of these bugs has been resolved.

 

See the full post by Donavon West at Liveside.net Here

Now Playing 4.03 (Beta)

Download

This version fixes the issue where the gadget would not detect when a track had changed in Foobar after the player had been reopened. It also supports editing of lyrics with non-standard characters in the track names.

Now Playing 4.01 (Beta)

Download

This version contains a possible fix for the issues with foobar. The problem is everytime you change track, Foobar stops the current track and then half a second later starts the next track, so it tells the gadget it's changed track twice (in very short succession) which confuses it a bit, hopefully this version fixes that.

Let me know what happens

Now Playing 4.0

Download

Now Playing 4.0 is now complete, hopefully I can now leave the gadget for a few more months and I hope you guys are happy with the new tweaks.

• Major: Delay between switching songs on WMP, iTunes, Winamp or Foobar and it updating within the gadget has been minimized, it is now normally under a second. This has also led to reduced resources usage.
• Major: Revamped skin system with 10 new large skins and 4 new skins provided by TheHobbyLounge.com
• Added "Tips and Tricks" page to settings
• Localised amazon search results for UK, US, CA, FR, DE, JP
• Amazon album art tweaked
• Media Monkey album art support, art is now taken straight from MM
• Media Monkey track editing (double click on track data when gadget is undocked)
• Media Monkey play/pause fixed
• Font size settings fixed
• You can now close Winamp normally, the quit button has been removed from the player
• Lots of tweaks, bug fixes and code improvements across the whole gadget

Note:

If you get a "Not a valid gadget package" error, delete all downloaded copies of the gadget and try again, this error means something went wrong when downloading the gadget.

If the track doesn't change when you change it manually in your media player: uninstall all copies of NP and reinstall 4.0 from the link above. This problem is related to still having the beta installed.

Now Playing 3.9993 (Beta)

Download

If nobody has any bugs to report on this I'll release it as an automatic update soon. The skin system has been tested on many systems and should now be fine.

• Skin system hopefully now fixed

Now Playing 3.9992 (Beta)

Download

The version numbers are getting a little silly now. The changes I made were quite fundamental to the way the gadget works and they also rely on filesystem stuff so people using XP or non English systems have had issues. Hopefully the gadget will soon be bug free and I can release a much improved 4.0 to the masses.

• Skin system improved for XP and Different locales
• Amazon locale system now compatible with XP
• Quit button removed for Winamp