Channel 9 - Entries tagged with Gadgets

First Microsoft Hohm Gadget Has Launched

Sarah Perez — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:01:00 GMT

Microsoft is launching its first Hohm-enabled gadget courtesy of a partnership with Blue Line Innovations, a Canadian-based company which sells energy monitoring and management devices. Hohm, for those unaware, is a web service designed to help consumers monitor and analyze their energy consumption and then make recommendations for cost-savings measures.

Previously, using the Hohm website, the Q&A section would have to be filled out based on what you knew about your home – but unless you already had energy-monitoring gadgets installed, your answers were estimates in several cases.

Now, with the new Hohm PowerCost Monitor and WiFi Gateway, you’ll have hard data.

The device hooks up to your home’s power meter (no wiring required!) and reads actual usage. The details are transmitted to your Microsoft Hohm account which displays the data in near real-time graphs and charts (delays are 30 seconds or so). You can also view the data from a mobile device, if desired.

This is only the beginning for Hohm-enabled gadgets: Microsoft plans to connect Hohm with smart plugs, thermostats, HVAC systems, electric vehicles (it’s already in the Ford Focus Electric) and more.

The Blue Line PowerCost Monitor and Wi-Fi Gateway are available today from Blue Line Innovations and through select retailers like Frys, Amazon, and Microsoft stores. The complete package of PowerCost Monitor and Wi-Fi Gateway is available for $249, the Wi-Fi Gateway is also sold separately for $159.

Xobni Lets Developers Port Gadgets to Outlook

Sarah Perez — Thu, 20 May 2010 15:16:00 GMT

Xobni is doing something interesting with regards to their developer platform: they’re letting developers who create gadgets for Gmail’s new Gadget Platform to port those same gadgets over to Microsoft Outlook. “Deploy Once. Deploy Twice. Nice,” reads the Xobni website where details about the new program are unveiled.

What this means is that developers can build applications that run inside Outlook without having to build an entire Outlook plugin. Instead, the developers can “piggyback” their gadgets on top of Xobni’s plugin, explains TechCrunch in a recent blog post.

Contextual gadgets appear when a current email address matches certain criteria, says Xobni. Like a flight check-in gadget could run when a user views an email with a travel itinerary.

Since Outloook reaches some 600 million users, it’s not a program email gadget makers want to ignore. Interested developers can sign up here to get started using Xobni’s new Developer Preview.

Pretty Glass Gadgets for Windows 7

Sarah Perez — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:28:00 GMT

Thanks to Into Windows, I just discovered a pretty glass gadget collection for Windows 7. Gadgets, in case you don’t know, are desktop widgets that can connect to the internet to display updated information like weather or news or connect to your computer itself to deliver stats on your PC’s resources like CPU and memory usage.

But being a bit of a desktop purist myself, I’ll admit that I’ve limited my gadgets to only two so far – one for weather and one for RSS feeds. I also limit the number of desktop icons displayed too. (And thanks to Windows 7’s superbar, the taskbar turned application launcher at the bottom of the screen, this is easier than ever).

My main complaint with gadgets is the precious screen real estate they take up – I didn’t want to cover up my beautiful wallpaper! But with this new glass gadget collection, the desktop background shines through the gadgets themselves. Gorgeous! Now I can have my gadgets and my background too.

You can download the whole pack containing all 14 glass gadgets here via the Into Windows website. The gadgets are hosted on the DeviantART community site where you can also see a preview of the gadgets in action.

(Image credit: Into Windows)

Freeltor uses WPF and Windows 7 Touch to drive increased business for real estate agents

John O'Donnell — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 16:50:00 GMT

Larry Gregory talked to the team of Adrian Manzano and Rene Nario of http://www.freeltor.com at a recent Bizspark incubation event hosted by Sanjay Jain.

Their solution reduces the administration overhead of running a business for the real estate agent and frees them to focus on their clients and buying and selling property. In a few short days Freeltor took advantage of touch in Windows 7 and Expression Blend to deliver both an administration tool as well as a Windows 7 gadget.

Enjoy the show!

John O'Donnell Microsoft Dynamics ISV Architect Evangelist
Microsoft Corporation
http://blogs.msdn.com/jodonnell
http://blogs.msdn.com/usisvde
http://www.twitter.com/jodonnel

New Remember the Milk Sidebar Gadget

Sarah Perez — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 15:31:00 GMT

There’s a new sidebar gadget available for fans of the To Do list service “Remember the Milk.” It’s cleverly called the “I Forgot the Milk” gadget. Actually, the gadget itself isn’t brand-new – it’s been out since January – but this latest update is, and frankly, this time it’s a lot more usable.

Once installed, you can choose which lists you want it to display, stretch it out taller if need be, and click the small plus sign (+) to add items to your lists right from the gadget itself. But what’s new in this version is the ability to add/edit/delete notes for tasks. (How did you live without this before?) You can also move the “No due date” items to either the top or bottom of the list and tag items at Quick Add.

Even though the Remember the Milk blog says this gadget is for Windows Vista users only, it appears to work just fine on Windows 7, too, even though prior versions had issues with that.

You can download the gadget from the Windows Live Gallery here.

Desktop Gadgets for Windows 7

Sarah Perez — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 22:30:00 GMT

The folks at Redmond Pie have just posted about their five top “must-have” gadgets for Windows 7. Introduced in Vista, gadgets are mini applications built using XML, DHTML, and JavaScript. In Vista, though, those gadgets were more constrained to the sidebar. Although you could move them outside the sidebar to other parts of the screen, the bar itself would never really go away. In Windows 7, that has changed. The sidebar is no more and the gadgets can sit anywhere on your screen in either a minimized or maximized state.

So what were Redmond Pie’s top picks? They chose the following:

Twadget – the Twitter gadget
The Remote Desktop Gadget
The Blue Calendar Gadget (it’s the same calendar gadget as the one included with the OS, just in a nicer color!)
The Windows Live “What’s New” Gadget (see our coverage)
The Simple Search Bar which floats web search boxes on your desktop

They also conveniently bundled all the gadgets into one download available here.

Of course, when we're talking about Windows 7 gadgets, let's not forget the new Windows Media Center Gadget – this one is built right in to the OS. Just right-click on your desktop and select “Gadgets” to add it.

Do you have any favorite gadgets for Windows 7 that you want to share?

This Keyboard is a PC!

Sarah Perez — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 21:39:00 GMT

At CES, Asus unveiled a full-sized keyboard with a PC built in. The PC’s desktop can be viewed from the 5-inch interactive display on the keyboard’s right side. The display can also operate media controls in addition to displaying a Windows desktop. The Asus Eee keyboard, named after the company’s line of netbook products, features an Atom processor, USB and video ports, an HDMI port to connect to your HDTV, Wi-Fi, and a solid state drive.

Right now the battery only lasts 90 minutes, but the company plans to up that to 3 hours by the time the device is available for sale. At the moment, the keyboard is just a prototype, but the company plans to release it in September.

(Image credit: Gizmodo)

Mars Gadget for Vista

Sarah Perez — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 16:48:00 GMT

Sweet! Brandon just posted about the coolest little gadget I’ve seen in a while –the Mars weather gadget for Vista. Thanks to the Phoenix Mars Lander, this gadget displays the maximum and minimum daily temps on Mars as well as the Mars weather. Hint: It’s sunny a lot there. And for even more Mars fun, the Lander is also on Twitter so you can get quick and humorous updates from the mission throughout the day, like this:

Build Your Own Gadgets with Bug Labs

Nic Fillingham — Thu, 22 May 2008 03:53:00 GMT

Got a great idea for a gadget but don't have access to a silicon fab plant in Taiwan?
Bug Labs allows you to create your own gadgets with modular snap-in components like a digital camera, accelerometer and GPS receiver.
We caught up with the guys from Bug Labs at Maker Faire for a quick overview of what it takes to build the next great gizmo!
More info: http://www.buglabs.net

ShareMaster Gadget for WHS

Sarah Perez — Fri, 02 May 2008 03:45:00 GMT

The Home Server Hacks blog has just announced a new Windows Vista Sidebar gadget just for Windows Home Server users. This gadget, called "ShareMaster for Home Server," gives you quick access to the Windows Home Server's standard shared folders (Music, Photos, Public, Software, Users and Videos). The gadget has six icons on it that correspond to those six shared folders on the server. Clicking an icon on the gadget will open up that network shared folder. What's even cooler, though, is that you can drag and drop files onto the icons themselves to automatically move them from your PC to your Home Server. That's handy! This is definitely a must-have tool for any Windows Home Server owners. You can download the gadget from here. (image via Home Server Hacks)

Favorite Sidebar Gadgets

Sarah Perez — Fri, 02 May 2008 03:31:00 GMT

Ed Bott put up a post about his favorite Vista sidebar gadgets the other day, which I thought was worth sharing. His favs included the clock and the notes gadget (both standard gadgets), as well as iWeather, a tweaked version of the standard weather gadget, Remote Desktop Gadget 2.0, App Launcher v3, a customizable collection of icons to launch favorite programs, and the Windows Search Indexer Gadget, which we covered here. He asked what others favorites are, so I'm going to revisit this topic and respond with some of the gadgets I'm running now:

Of course, I love the Channel 10 gadget, but did you know there are gadgets for Channel 9, Mix Online, and TechNet Edge, too? As a blogger, I also love the Feedburner Readers gadget, so I can obsessively check my subscriber numbers, and since I collect Coke Rewards point, I was happy to find a gadget just for that. I've also added the System Control gadget, which is definitely one of the better shutdown gadgets out there, offering you the ability to do more than just the normal Shutdown, Restart, Lock, and Sleep / Hibernate. It also lets you Switch User, Log Off, Run Task Manager, open the Run Window, and run the Command Prompt.

We've covered a lot of cool gadgets in the past, if you're looking for more cool ones to try. Laura even posted a video about our favs back in December. If you love gadgets, you can also stay updated on the latest arrivals by subscribing to the Windows Live Gallery feed. (img via frankarr)

Indexer Sidebar Gadget

Sarah Perez — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 15:23:00 GMT

Are you using Windows Search or the Windows Search 4.0 Preview to index your PC's files for quick and easy searching? Then you might like the Windows Indexer Status Gadget from Brandon Paddock. Brandon, a member of the Windows Shell team, created this gadget to keep tabs on how many files Windows Search has indexed. You can also use the gadget to see how many items still need to be processed or open the indexing options control panel. With the pause and play buttons, you can start and stop indexing from running, and, if you're running Windows Search 4.0 Preview, there is an "Index Now" button, too. You can even change the gadget's colors! Download the gadget here.

Channel 10 Vista Sidebar Gadget

Larry Larsen — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 15:56:00 GMT

If you can't get enough Channel 10 (it's a known problem) you might want to check out our new Channel 10 Vista Sidebar gadget. This gadget will sit on your desktop and scroll through everything that goes through our front page. You can click the '10' logo on the top of the gadget to jump to the latest post, click the photo to open the gadget up, and then click the left and right arrows that appear to cycle through posts. You can even watch videos right from the gadget through the Silverlight player. (Special thanks to Donavon West, author of LiveGadgets.net and HomeServerHacks.com, for putting the 'gad' in our gadget.)

TRULY small MP3 players at CES 2008

Laura Foy — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 15:42:00 GMT

We took a poll and you voted- what you wanted to see from the 2008 CES show was small, tiny gadgets. So I found what I think is TRULY the smallest MP3 player at the event. The added bonus is, not only is it small enough to wear as a necklace charm but its easy to use, affordable, stylish and has great audio quality.

Vista-Style Desktop Clock for Non-Vista PCs

Sarah Perez — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 22:00:00 GMT

Are you an XP user with Vista widget-envy? One of the most useful Vista widgets is the clock, which is one of the default widgets included with Vista's sidebar. Now Windows XP users can get a clock of their very own. ClockX is a desktop clock that comes pre-loaded with lots of different themes from which to choose. You can also configure several options like whether you want the clock pinned to the desktop, always on top, how transparent it is, whether it should start with Windows, etc. However, its killer feature is the ability to configure alarms. The alarms can be configured to display a message, play a sound or video, execute an application, shut down the PC, or any combination of those options. Now, that's handy! Vista users, don't fret, ClockX will work for you, too. (Via the How-To Geek)

Office Tips Sidebar Gadget

Sarah Perez — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 19:00:00 GMT

With the new Microsoft Office Tips Gadget, you can teach yourself a new tip or trick for Microsoft Office every day. The gadget, designed for the Windows Vista sidebar, is great for new users, or for those of us who found ourselves overwhelmed with all the new features of Office 2007, and not enough time to learn them all. With this gadget, you can just learn a little bit at a time. When you see a new tip display, all you have to do is click on it and it will display the full text of the tip, and then you can go test your newfound knowledge in Microsoft Office. To download this gadget, click here to visit the Windows Live Gallery. (found on the Windows Vista Team blog)

Outlook Gadgets

Sarah Perez — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 19:25:00 GMT

I've recently discovered several handy Outlook sidebar gadgets that can help me stay up-to-date with the flood of incoming messages in my Outlook inbox. If you saw my other Outlook post, you'll know that I'm a big fan of the ClearContext add-in for Microsoft Outook, so when I saw this ClearContext gadget, I had to get it. The ClearContext Inbox Alert Gadget is a fast way to preview your Outlook email. Using priority color-coding and message sorting & filtering, the gadget gives you an "heads-up" view of your busy inbox. The gadget is a free download, and you don't have to use ClearContext to benefit from it. Combine that with two other great Outlook gadgets - Outlook Appointments and Outlook Tasks - and you can easily keep an eye on your inbox, without obsessively checking your email and calendar throughout the day.

Tivo Gadget for Windows Vista

Sarah Perez — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 20:22:00 GMT

Mike Swanson recently blogged about a cool new gadget he wrote for the Windows Vista Sidebar, the TiVo Gadget for Windows Vista. The gadget, available for download here, is the perfect addition to TiVo users' desktops. Even if you have multiple TiVos in your house, you can utilize this gadget to see the "Now Playing" lists from your DVR. You can configure the gadget to group shows from the same series together and when the gadget notices a new recording, it will ding. For homes with multiple TiVos, you can give the units friendly names, like "Downstairs" or "Den" to help identify them. When you click on the name of a TV show in the gadget, you can see the show's description. There is a bit of trickery involved to get the TiVo's name for use in the gadget because TiVos, unlike most networked devices, don't share their name (aka "the service number") on the network. There are several steps involved to get your TiVo's name, but Mike has them well-documented on his blog post, so they're pretty easy to follow. Once you have the service name, you just enter that and your Media Access Key into the gadget's settings and you'll be done - your TiVo's "Now Playing" list will now be on your desktop!

Automatic Wallpaper Changer

Sarah Perez — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 18:22:00 GMT

I tend to change my desktop wallpaper on a fairly regular basis, so when I discovered this Vista sidebar gadget that can do it for me, I was thrilled. The Desktop Wallpaper gadget is similar to the Slide Show gadget, except that it allows you to change your wallpaper in designated intervals. What's cool about it is that it allows for a couple more wallpaper options than Vista supports by default, like "crop to fit screen" and "maintain aspect ratio." You can either have the slide show feature playing or you can set that option to "preview next wallpaper" instead. The gadget's author has created other great gadgets, including the Polaroid gadget which lets you place photos on your desktop, rotate them, and give them captions. He is also working on version 2 of the Desktop gadget, which would bring video to the desktop as well, like DreamScene does.

Our Favorite Gadgets

Laura Foy — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 18:48:00 GMT

Windows Vista Gadgets have become a very commonplace feature on our computer desktops. However, navigating through the thousands and thousands that are offered to you can be a towering feat. So, my team and I have gone ahead and done some of that work for you. I offer you, our top 10 gadgets that will greatly improve your life, productivity, health, wealth and wisdom (and a few just for fun).

CSI Widget, GamePass, PopCap, Say It, Twadget, Last.Fm, Mini Thesaurus, Mini Dictionary, Dream Interpreter, Expedia Fare Alert

What are yours?

The unseen Microsoft

Laura Foy — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 21:09:00 GMT

I first learned about the Microsoft embedded department at The Imagine Cup. It's a category that seemed half software design and half hardware design- in fact it confused many outsiders. However, once we caught on, it was easily one of the most interesting aspects of the competition. So...continuing my love of all things "embedded"-I visited their home base here in Redmond to see what new and exciting toys they had coming down the pike. Good stuff.

Xbox Friends Watch : Silverlight Sidebar Gadget

Adam Kinney — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 06:28:58 GMT

Now that HALO 3 has been released, my Xbox 360 and I are hanging out together again, Xbox Live is in the picture too. Why? Best answer could be HALO 3 multiplayer mode, and what's better than multiplayer mode? Multiplayer mode with friends.

This resulted in a perfect opportunity to create a new sidebar gadget, which of course since I'm a big fan of Silverlight I used it as the UI for the gadget. I'm pretty happy with the results and this video is a quick demo of how the gadget works.

Learn more about the gadget...

NFL Sidebar Gadgets

Sarah Perez — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 16:05:00 GMT

Attention sports fans! Here are 3 must-have Vista sidebar gadgets that any NFL fan must have:

1. The NFL News Gadget: This gadget can be configured to either show you the latest headlines for the entire league or you can change it to just show you the news about your favorite team.

2. The NFL Scores Gadget: This gadget shows you your team's current score for the ongoing game or it will display who they are playing next & when.

3. The Sports News Gadget: This gadget displays general sports news but can be customized to just show news from a specific sport like football, baseball, basketball, hockey, etc.

(Thanks to the InsideMicrosoft blog for this!)

Expedia Fare Alert Vista Sidebar Gadget

Sarah Perez — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 03:37:00 GMT

The popular travel website, Expedia, has introduced a new Windows Vista sidebar gadget that is perfect for anyone planning a vacation. The Expedia Fare Alert Vista Sidebar Gadget is now availabe for download from the Windows Live Gallery website. This handy gadget can be customized to search for the best fares for up to three different domestic or international destinations.

You can configure the gadget to search for the flights you want, the month you want to travel, and the price you want to pay. When all of the crieria is met, the gadget displays a real-time desktop alert with the pricing information. If you click on the alert, you will be taken to the Expedia.com website where you can book the flight and lock in the fare displayed. Additionally, the Fare Alert gadget's calendar feature displays the lowest daily fare for the flight or flights you're interested in. This is a great tool for anyone who wants to find a good, low-priced airfare, but who doesn't have time to keep scouring websites for the best deal.

Building a Windows Side Bar gadget for tracking traffic

Charles Sterling — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 06:18:56 GMT

Been doing a lot of work with John at Soul Solutions and thought i would post a screen cast of his latest gadget...Monitoring Queensland Traffic! The gadget is based off the slideshow gadget from Vista. 15 Queensland Cameras are hardcoded in Javascript. By default the slideshow will fade between the cameras every ten seconds but the navigation controls allow manual control to move forward or backward and pause.

Enjoy!