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The 7 Best Windows 7 Gadgets

Matt Smith — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 16:30:00 +0000

No one really liked the Windows Sidebar when it arrived with Windows Vista. Most enthusiasts saw it as nothing more than cheap rip-off of Mac’s Dashboard with less overall functionality. In response, Microsoft polished up the concept and introduced a proper gadgets platform in Windows 7.

Unlike the sidebar, gadgets in Windows 7 are actually very useful. Unfortunately many people overlook this feature, instead going or a platform like Google Desktop. Having used both Google Desktop and Windows 7 Gadgets, I have to say that gadgets have some advantages. They feel much smoother than Google Desktop’s alternative. The selection is more limited, however, so let’s take a look at some great Windows 7 gadgets.

Three Useful Meters

System monitors are nice to have on your desktop. They offer you the ability to keep an eye on your computer’s resources in real time, which lets you keep an eye out for any strange spikes in the usage of your computer’s resources. These spikes are usually no problem, but on occasion they can alert you to the existence of malware or simply a program that you installed and then later forgot about.

There are three great, related system monitor gadgets available for Windows 7. These gadgets are called CPU Meter, Network Meter, and Drive Meter. CPU meter monitors processor usage by displaying a graphic of processor usage and also status bars for each processor core. This gadget also monitors RAM usage. The network monitor displays IP addresses and keeps track of both uploads and downloads. The drives monitor displays all connected hard drive and their capacity.

Of course, there are many system monitor gadgets you can choose from. What makes these things stand out from the crowd, however, is their interface. Each has a very clear, easy to understand aesthetic that conveys maximum information in minimal space. This aesthetic is the same across all three gadgets, as well (the gadgets are made by the same developer) so your desktop doesn’t look like a hodge-podge of unrelated gadgets.

Facebook and Twitter Explorer

Facebook and Twitter Explorer are, like the monitors above, two related gadgets created by the same developer. In this case, however, the gadgets deal with the most popular social networking websites.

The purpose of these two gadgets is the same. Both Facebook and Twitter are frequently updated by users, and you may also add messages to both. Facebook and Twitter explorer act as simple desktop interfaces for this functionality. This means that you don’t have to have a browser window open in order to keep up to date on Facebook and Twitter updates.

The Twitter Explorer is functional enough that you may no longer have much need to visit the Twitter website. The Facebook Explorer gadget is also functional enough when it comes to status updates, but it doesn’t let you browse or add friends, play Facebook games, or access any of Facebook’s other pages.

SkypeGadget

If you use Skype a great deal you may, like me, become a little bit frustrated with the program’s interface. I personally find Skype’s interface to be far larger than it really needs to be, and while the new ability to access Skype status through a Jumplist in Windows 7 is nice, it doesn’t address the fundamentally bloated interface.

Because of these complaints, I found SkypeGadget to be very useful. SkypeGadget serves as a more compact front end to Skype, making it possible to use Skype without having to deal with the normal Skype interface. SkypeGadget lets you view your contacts, make calls, and begin IM conversations with them. I love having the ability to view my contacts without a huge Skype window on my desktop.

My only complaint with the gadget is the inability to place Skype phone calls to “real” phone numbers due to the lack of a numberpad. Hopefully this will be addressed in a future release.

Doppler RadLoop

Weather gadgets are a bit played out, but that is mostly because they all tend to do the same thing, displaying estimated current weather conditions and perhaps a forecast of some kind. That’s alright, but the problem is that the information isn’t always useful. Let’s say, for example, that you want to ride your bike down to a coffee shop. A weather gadget that simply says the forecast is for scattered shows doesn’t help you much because it can’t tell you if a shower is really near your area or not.

For that, you need to take a look at a weather radar, and that is why Doppler RadLoop is so useful. Doppler RadLoop provides real-time radar information for your current location. This lets you actually take a look at the current weather conditions and make a better decision. If a big blob of red is showing up in your area, you best stay home.

There are a few weather gadgets for Windows 7, but Doppler Radloop works the smoothest. IF you need to keep a track on current weather this is the best way to do it.

Get Your Gadget On

I think some people shy away from Windows 7 gadgets because of the poor taste left in their mouth by Vista Sidebar. Give them a second chance! These are some very useful Windows 7 gadgets, and the often times work better than gadgets available on other platforms.

if you know of any other interesting gadgets, please add them in the comments.

Hahlo – A Vibrant No-Download Twitter App For Your Firefox Sidebar

Jessica Cam Wong — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 23:30:37 +0000

If you want to quickly sift through your Twitter timeline, mentions or direct messages; a full-featured Twitter application or plugin that you have downloaded for your system or browser could become a severe time-drain or resource-hog.
For those that would prefer smaller, inobstrusive ways to keep up with Twitter, you could login to Twitter.com but until Twitter develops an easier-to-navigate site, why not check out other web-based alternatives?

We have talked about some great addons that perform tiny miracles in the Firefox sidebar and the next one is no exception.

The app in question, Hahlo (previously iTweetr) stands out from the crowd in that it is not an addon or extension. Instead, it simply aims to be a much more handsome and intuitive web interface for Twitter designed for iPhone and iPod Touch users. Thus, using it in the Firefox sidebar just makes sense as it looks and fits nicely (or you can use it on your iPhone), but it also helps your browser stay intact without performance- or speed-deteriorating addons. Let’s see what makes Hahlo a great candidate to be your next favorite Twitter app:

OAuth: Pretty much any reputable application that aims to serve you with a better Twitter service nowadays lets you connect using OAuth. Hahlo fits in this category as it displays that relieving “Sign in with Twitter” phrase to prevent you from having to sign up for another account.
No need to download or install anything: First sign into Hahlo with OAuth and give your OK to trust it. Then drag the tab to your bookmarks toolbar in Firefox to bookmark Hahlo, right-click on the bookmark, select Properties, and check the box to load the bookmark in the sidebar.
Unobstrusive for your general web browsing: Hahlo doesn’t reload onto the current tab. Contrary to some iPhone-centric websites that eventually reload themselves on the current Firefox tab, Hahlo neatly stays in the sidebar showing you your customized timeline.

We first described Hahlo as a worthy Twitter tool, but this beautifully-designed-for-iPhone/iPod-Touch (and ad-free!) app offers a few more noticeable features.

Customization

You can edit your Twitter profile (which not many Twitter iPhone apps let you do), choose a specific start page (for which it’ll ask to store data for offline use, but Hahlo will remember your choice until you close your browser/delete cookies), such as mentions, direct messages or a combination of pages, choose a refresh time of 1 to 10 minutes and select how many tweets (from 10 to 200) show up in your timeline.

Also, if you prefer certain colors, you can customize the colors for the background, text, links, etc.

Ability To Display Conversations and Expand URLs In-Line

Hahlo not only provides options to access replies in one-click and reveal shortened links, but it also does advanced search for favorited tweets, trends, by location, specific retweets, etc.

Bonus for Mac users

If you’re using a Mac, you’ll be gifted the ability to turn the web app into a desktop app with Fluid and even receive notifications via Growl.

I didn’t encounter any problems with Hahlo’s latest version 4, which was released a bit more than six months ago and really works great, but if you for some reason, can’t in with OAuth, just try reloading Hahlo’s site or you can try using its older version 3. Also, Hahlo doesn’t currently include a way to upload a picture with your tweet, but you can include your location.

Hahlo, adapted as a ‘standalone’ site on the Firefox sidebar, could rock for users looking for a more usable and elegant Twitter web page, or those with limited screen space (e.g netbooks), or anyone looking for one-click access to Twitter streams.

Do you use any websites, in addition to Twitter’s own, to quickly check Twitter or do you prefer more full-featured desktop apps?

Image credit: Kodz Red, Jaziel, benjigarner

Unity – A Modern Lightweight Desktop For Ubuntu [Linux]

Justin Pot — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 16:31:41 +0000

The team at Canonical is working hard to change the way people think of Ubuntu, and Unity is the latest effort on that front. Announced by Canonical last month, Unity is an alternative desktop intended for OEMs who want to offer an “instant web” supplement to Windows.

To this end the team’s designed an environment that borrows pieces from Mac OSX and Windows 7 both, but also intends to bring forward the best of Ubuntu. Unity’s not really done, but this being Ubuntu you’re more than welcome to give this desktop for Ubuntu a spin.

If you’ve already got Ubuntu or Ubuntu Netbook Edition up and running then let’s get started!

Installation

The first thing you’ll need to do is add the Unity PPA to your Ubuntu. Open a Terminal (it’s under “Accessories” in the menu.) Enter the following lines, one at a time, followed by the “Enter” key:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:canonical-dx-team/une
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install unity

This may take a while, and you’ll have to follow a few prompts along the way, but when it’s done you will have the Unity environment completely installed. It will not replace your current desktop, though some packages may be replaced. In fact, you can log into either Unity or your usual desktop at any time.

To log into Unity, just log out of your current session. Type your user name and you’ll notice a “Session” option at the bottom of the screen. Select the Unity desktop and log in, and Unity will almost instantly open.

Look & Feel

As you can see, the Unity interface is really simple. A Windows-7-like bar dominates the left side of the screen, while on top is a bar with most of the standard panel things. Completely missing is an application menu of any kind; it seems Canonical is hoping to direct users toward a Mac-like “Applications” folder instead:

This folder contains links to every program installed on the computer. Dragging these icons to the dock doesn’t currently work, but you can run them and then right-click their icons in the dock to permanently add them to the dock. This is, as of this time, the only way to add icons to the dock.

As for the Ubuntu icon in the top-left corner? It is not an application menu, even though this is what Ubuntu users are trained to expect. Instead it shows all currently open windows, in a manner similar to Expose on Macs.

Like I said, some ideas are borrowed from OSX and some are borrowed from Windows 7. What’s new? Well, the Google bar in the top-right for one. This is a pretty simplistic tool; all it does is launch a Google search in your default toolbar.

You’ll also find the standard Ubuntu notification menus on the right-side of the bar, including the one that integrates all your inboxes. Notably, the clock’s been replaced with a simpler interface:

These notifications menus are here but the bar is not a Gnome panel. In fact, if you’re a Ubuntu geek like me, you’ll quickly notice that the “Ctl F2″ shortcut to bring up the “Run” dialogue doesn’t work. Gnome Panel’s simply not a part of this setup.

This being a desktop environment still in development, there are a few bugs. Some applications don’t show up properly in the dock, including The Gimp and anything related to Adobe Air:

Take note that there’s no icon in the tray for TweetDeck. As mentioned previously, trying to drag an icon to the dock won’t add it; instead, it will crash the system.

I also feel that adding a dock to the left side of the screen takes up a lot of room, and as such makes my netbook feel even smaller than it already is. Perhaps at some point in the future we’ll be able decrease the dock’s size, or allow it to auto-hide.

Conclusion

Unity’s an interesting idea, but it’s very much a work in project. You yourself may love using it – it’s relatively stable – but I myself can’t yet think of a use for it.

I’m hoping at some point this desktop for Ubuntu will be the light-weight addition to Ubuntu I’ve been waiting for. In my work with Boulder Community Computers I’m always looking for ways to use Ubuntu to bring new life to old computers, but it seems Unity is not yet the solution I’m looking for.

What do you guys think? Do you like how Unity makes the Ubuntu Desktop feel, or is it too Mac-like for your tastes? Are you excited about what it might become, or do you think it’s perfectly usable now? Let us know in the comments below.

Do you have alternative ideas for using Ubuntu to bring new life to old computers? I’d appreciate it if you let me know about that too, either here or over at the Boulder Community Computers blog.

Geeking-Out Your Windows Desktop The Non-Geeky Way With Rainmeter

Jeffry Thurana — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 19:30:16 +0000

After reading the article about utilizing GeekTool to customize Mac desktop, one of my friends asked me whether there are similar applications for Windows. I did a little web searching and found the Rainmeter, which MakeUseOf covered briefly in the article on 12 Great Ways of Spicing Up Your Windows Desktop.

This “less geeky version of GeekTool” for Windows allows its users to add and display a variety of modules on the desktop such as a clock, the date, CPU load, RSS feeds, and currently playing song; as well as customizable shortcuts to installed applications. Even though this is considered “less geeky” in the sense that customization doesn’t involve tinkering with scripts and codes, first-time users might feel overwhelmed by everything. There are so many things that you can do in in the Rainmeter that you might not know where to start.

But let’s sort things out one by one, shall we?

Upon installation, you’ll see the Enigma Home menu.

This is where you can gain access to Rainmeter’s settings including The PDF Instruction, Skin Manager, Theme Manager, and Configuration. This Home menu can be accessed anytime by double-clicking on Rainmeter’s Sidebar or Taskbar.

As the names suggests, Sidebars are located at the sides of the screen, while Taksbars are at the top and bottom. The number of available sidebars and taskbars will depend on which Rainmeter theme that you use.

Click on the Theme icon in the Home menu to open the Rainmeter Theme Manager. There are four default themes that come with the installer: Enigma, Enigma Preview, Lightning Sunset, and Wing Firefox. You could also change the theme quickly via the right click menu.

If you have a big display, you might want to try Enigma Preview as this theme gives the most information about your system, but it is also the most crowded.

As for the coolest, I personally think that the clock from Wing Firefox theme is awesome. You can show this clock in any theme by right clicking on the bars and choose: Configs > Arcs > Arcs.ini (or Dark Arcs.ini).

All of the themes work best with a dark background/wallpaper. The transparency of the bars and the white letters make the information difficult to read with a light background. If you really love your bright background, you can adjust the transparency by right-clicking on the taskbar/sidebar and choose Skin Menu > Transparency > (the percentage of transparency). The lower the number, the darker the bars will be. Please note that you have to do the adjustment for each and every bar individually.

But all the serious stuff are in the Configuration menu. This is the place where you input all the necessary information to display on the sidebars, such as Yahoo Weather code for your place, the account information for your GMail and Twitter, RSS feeds, Application paths and labels, and whole lot of other information.

Go through the items one by one, enter the correct information, and click Set. After you’ve finished, don’t forget to save the settings. You don’t need to fill in all the information, but the more information you provide the better.

Another things that you can adjust is the position of the elements. Right-click on a bar and make sure that the option Draggable is checked.

Then you can freely drag and drop each and every element of the bars – including the bars themselves – to any position that you prefer. If you want them to align neatly with the screen edges, don’t forget to click on “Snap to Edges”

You can show/hide any element in any theme by right-clicking the bars and going to the “Configs” menu.

Go above and beyond

Even though everything described above is enough to start using Rainmeter, there is still a whole lot more that you can tinker with (and we haven’t even touched the Skin!). Refer to the Instructions.pdf for more information.

If you feel a little adventurous, why not dive deeper and try to edit the Settings. Right click on one of the bars and choose “Edit Settings“.

Then Rainmeter.ini will show up – opened with Notepad – ready to be edited. Just be sure that you know what you are doing.

Do you know other alternative to Rainmeter? Share using the comments below.

2 Great Browser Addons for Utilizing Twitter Comments

Steve Campbell — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 16:31:49 +0000

People spend a LOT of time on social media sites like Twitter, chatting with fellow friends and colleagues, reading the latest trending topics, and sharing links to popular blog posts and news articles. Likewise, these same individuals also spend a lot of time surfing the web for interesting content, often sharing their thoughts, ideas, and links on Twitter.

But what if you want to access all of those tweets days later? The more Twitter followers you have the more quickly these tweets get lost in the shuffle, and unless you’re looking for them specifically they are unlikely to ever find you.

Luckily there are web apps for just that. In this article, we will be discussing two of the best options for Twitter commenting that are available right now in the form of Twitter addons for your browser, as well as how they allow you to add to the conversation and create your own Twitter comments.

Kutano

Kutano is one of the better Twitter addons for “weaving” Twitter discussions into your browsing. We mentioned Kutano briefly in our article 10 Firefox Add-ons To Find Friends On Social Networks. It is available as a browser extension for Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Google Chrome (Beta builds) and works on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Kutano is a sidebar Twitter addon and docks to the side of your browser. When you surf the web, it updates with all of the tweets that took place about that particular page. You can see who tweeted about the page, what they said, and how popular it is on Twitter. If there are tweets that are similar (like re-tweets) you can see that too!

By switching to the “˜website’ tab, you can see what other pages are being tweeted about on the website you are viewing. This is a good way to find other articles you might be interested in from the same website.

While viewing the tweets of a particular page, the Kutano Twitter addon allows you to view the person’s Twitter profile, follow them, reply to their tweet, and re-tweet their tweet, all from within the application.

Need more than 140 characters to comment on a webpage? No problem. Kutano has a “˜discussions’ tab where you can write your comments and engage multiple people simultaneously in a discussion about the webpage.

If you sign up for a Kutano account you can login with your Twitter credentials and see your timeline, along with your @mentions, direct messages, and followers. If you don’t want to keep the sidebar visible you can minimize it and view tweet and discussion counts down in your browser’s status bar.

AddATweet

AddATweet is another good Twitter addon for viewing/creating Twitter comments on a page. Although it is strictly featured as an extension for Firefox at the moment, its simplicity and integration with Twitter is what sets it apart from other commenting and web annotation apps.

Like Kutano, AddATweet is a sidebar that allows you to see all of the tweets that were made about a specific webpage. There is a box at the top that allows you to add comments and tweet them out to your followers. Clicking the “˜tweet this‘ box adds your comments to the webpage as well as your public timeline on Twitter.

You can reply to tweets, re-tweet them, @ mention the person, and even mark them as spam. When you re-tweet or reply from within AddATweet, your comments are posted right under those that you were responding to, making it a threaded conversation.

You can sort comments by “˜everyone’, those who you are “˜following’, and those based on “˜authority’. Authority means that only comments made by people who have the most followers will be seen first. This sorting ability is useful if a page has a lot of comments and you want to see those made by popular Twitterers or if you simply want to see what your followers have written.

Like Leaving Comments Yet?

Reading and leaving comments directly on the pages you find interesting is yet another great way to utilize the power of Twitter. Even those that don’t understand Twitter all that well can find Twitter addons like Kutano and AddATweet useful because they allow you to find like-minded people and converse with them about popular topics on the web.

If you’re in the commenting mood, why not leave a comment on this page? Let’s start a discussion!

4 Cool Ways to Login to Facebook Without Going to the Site

Ryan Dube — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:01:45 +0000

As Facebook grows in popularity and continues to evolve as a leading social network, many users find themselves obsessed with constantly walking over to their PC and doing a Facebook login just to see if there are any new notifications or messages.

Wouldn’t it be nice if your computer could just automatically do a Facebook login and provide you with an alert whenever anything new happens? Or wouldn’t it be wonderful to just pop open a little application on your mobile phone that would show all of your friends’ latest updates?

All of these things and more are possible – there are many ways to login to Facebook without going to the website, and in this post I’m going to detail four methods that you can use to do so. The four ways you can log into Facebook without directly navigating to the website and logging in is with your cellphone, with a desktop aggregator, with an Internet based aggregator, or through a desktop gadget.

1. Monitor Facebook on Your Computer With Digsby or Trillian

Since I spend a large majority of my time sitting in front of the same laptop while I’m writing articles, the ideal way for me to do a Facebook login without going to the website is through a desktop aggregator. Now, personally I use Digsby because I prefer the interface and I find it very easy to quickly update my status or add comments to my friends’ posts.

It saves a great deal of time because Digsby automatically logs into all of your social networks the moment you boot up your computer, and it immediately reports whenever there are any updates. You can review and respond to them right in the interface. If this sounds like the choice for you, make sure to check out David’s article on Digsby to learn more.

Now, it wouldn’t be fair to mention the PC aggregator method of an automatic Facebook login without mentioning Trillian. There are many people who prefer Trillian Astra over every other IM/social networking client, and for good reason.

Just like Digsby, you can set up Trillian to login to Facebook automatically, and all you have to do to see Facebook updates is hover the mouse over your Facebook connection. While I don’t personally prefer the Trillian interface, I can certainly see why it would be the preferred client app for many people. If this app appeals to you, then stop navigating over to Facebook to log in and instead read Saikat’s explanation as to why Trillian is the best IM client.

2. Check Facebook on the Web With Online Aggregators

Now, if you don’t want to download any software to your computer, there are still ways that you can login to Facebook without having to navigate to the website all of the time. You can do this by using an online aggregator of all of the social networking tools that you use. These usually not only include Facebook, but also things like your IM accounts, blog accounts and Twitter or Myspace.

One of the oldest portals is often also an overlooked approach to logging into Facebook automatically – iGoogle. When you search iGoogle for Facebook gadgets, you’ll find a number of them. Most of them are similar and work fine.

For example, the gadget I chose above works well, and it lets you login to Facebook directly from your iGoogle page.

Now, if you prefer an online portal that aggregates all of the social networks you use (in addition to Facebook), there are two very popular options. If you’ve been following along here at MakeUseOf, then you may know what they are. First, the one that’s my own favorite – Zooloo.

Once you’ve got the widget set up to automatically log into your Facebook account, all you have to do is set Zooloo as your home page and it’ll log you into Facebook every time you load up your browser. Mahendra covered Zooloo in excellent detail just recently. It’s definitely an option people use to connect to Facebook that’s worth checking out.

A very close second favorite is a site Daniel covered called Second Brain, which organizes your online networks into interesting “collections.” Either approach you take, the online approach to logging into Facebook allows you to check your Facebook account from anywhere, possibly even if Facebook itself is blocked by a firewall.

3. Login to Facebook From the Vista Sidebar

While this approach is limited to Windows Vista users, it is another convenient method you can use to receive notifications of Facebook updates. I covered a few of those Vista sidebar options a while ago.

Of the available options, myFacebook is my favorite because it offers more information than other widgets, such as a scrolling update from your friends’ status comments. This widget automatically logs into Facebook when your computer boots, and you receive notification of private messages, pokes and friend notifications.

You can download MyFacebook from the Windows Live gallery.

Just keep in mind that when you do install it, you need to go through a few steps to confirm authentication with Facebook, including obtaining and entering a special login code, and clicking on a link in Facebook that allows the application to access your account details.

The good news is that the widget wizard goes through the setup process in a few very simple, easy-to-follow steps.

4. Accessing Facebook From Your Mobile

The fourth and most commonly sought-after method to access Facebook is with a mobile device. Whether people use a Blackberry, iPhone or Windows Mobile device, they want to login to their Facebook account while on the go. The good news is that there are several ways to do this, depending which mobile device you’re using.

My personal favorite that I’ve been using for some time is F’im, a Windows Mobile based app for mobile Facebook. With that said, if I was running Windows Mobile 6.0, I would probably download Microsoft’s official Windows Mobile Facebook app.

While the user online status screen looks pretty cool, many of the screens just look like straight Facebook mobile screens. However, what F’IM lacks in terms of creativity for status screens is the software’s ability to automatically post images from your phone to your Facebook account.

Do you have a favorite way to log into your Facebook account other than going to the website? Which solution do you prefer, mobile, desktop aggregator, desktop widget or online aggregator? Share your feedback in the comments section below.

2 Windows Vista Gadgets to Login to Facebook from a Sidebar

Ryan Dube — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 20:01:56 +0000

Less than a year ago, I started using Facebook out of pure curiosity. I logged in and added a few old friends from high school. As I’m sure many readers out there can relate, two or three friends turned into almost fifty practically overnight. I was fascinated by the fact that I could catch up with friends that I’d lost touch with for over fifteen years.

It became very clear to me that Facebook was not your high school teenage fad. I found folks from my old home town – some of them well into retirement age – happily posting status updates about their daily activities, struggles, joys and thoughts. This, I thought to myself (and still do), is something that’s going to have major social ramifications. I’m not really sure what they are going to be, but the proliferation of Facebook throughout the world and throughout most industries completely fascinates me.

However, there is this one little thing that absolutely annoyed me about Facebook. You have to go to the site, do the Facebook login, and keep it open in order to receive status updates, notices or alerts about what’s going on. Sure, you could configure your profile to send notifications to your email address, but then you have to constantly check your email – and who wants an email box completely spammed by Facebook notifications? So, after buying a new PC with Windows Vista installed – complete with neat desktop sidebar applications – I started looking for a way to do the Facebook login automatically and receive instant status updates directly to my desktop, without having to log into Facebook all the time.

During that search, I discovered two perfect free Facebook login tools – the Facebook Sidebar Gadget, and MyFacebook. Just to save you some time – I opted for MyFacebook because it offered more interactive features. If you’d rather go for that, scroll down to the MyFacebook section. However, I also wanted to review the Facebook Gadget as well – and since that’s the one I tried first, I’ve reviewed it first.

Automatic Facebook Login With The Sidebar Gadget

For widgets and applications that automatically connect to your Facebook account, you need to acquire and configure a special number that gives that application “permission” to check your Facebook account for you. When you download the gadget and click on the file to install it, it’ll place the gadget on your sidebar as shown here.

When you click on “Login” the app automatically opens to your Facebook page, where you’ll need to do the regular Facebook login if you haven’t already. There, you’ll see this window.

Just click “Get login code for” and on the next screen click “Generate” and you’ll finally receive the magical “one-time” code to provide your gadget so that it can automatically do your Facebook login for you automatically.

Copy the code, and then go back to your desktop sidebar and click on the little “wrench” icon to the right of it. When you do that, the window will pop-up for you to enter your super-secret Facebook code.

Enter in the code, and now you’ll never have to do another manual Facebook login in your life.

The gadget displays your profile picture as well as your current status, and small icons and associated values next to them for how many pokes, events, friend requests, inbox messages, notifications, invitations, and group requests! This is all fine and dandy, but I have one problem with the gadget. You don’t actually receive any realtime information from Facebook, it only provides you with the number of each item, and when you click on the little icon, it opens up a browser and takes you to that specific Facebook page. This is cool – but what if you just want to keep an eye on what your friends are up to without having to open up your browser?

In order to accomplish this task, I went back to Windows Live Gallery and downloaded the other Facebook sidebar gadget called MyFacebook.

Automatic Facebook Login With MyFacebook

When you download and install this sidebar gadget, the first thing you’ll see is the same request for the Facebook code. You’ll need to obtain the code the same way as described above.

Just click on the link and go through the same steps – click “Get Login Code” and then “Generate.” Copy the code and then go back to the gadget and click on the “wrench” icon. You’ll notice that in this case, the form looks just a bit different.

These additional fields are required because this particular gadget has more functionality than the one above. It will automatically provide you with your friends’ latest status updates and picture gallery photos (if you want). I’m not really interested in the albums, but I do want the friend updates. If you only want your “notifications,” but not specific content from your friends’ walls, you need to find the notification feed. Not sure where to find it? Just click on the link above where it says “you can get the feed url from here.” You’ll be taken to a notifications page. Scroll down and on the right you’ll see “Your Notifications” – click on it.

This will take you to the actual RSS feed page for all of your notifications. All you have to do is copy the URL and paste it into the form on your sidebar gadget.

Now, getting your friend feed is much easier. In the sidebar gadget, just click on “click this link to enable Friends feed,” and then click “Allow Access” on the Facebook page that comes up – it doesn’t get much simpler than that.

The setup is similar to the previous gadget, except now that you have a real-time scrolling update of your friends’ status, the app feels much more interactive and always connected. Now, you can instantly update your own status, or you can just glance to the right and read the status updates of the latest few friends – and you don’t have to set foot inside any browser to do it!

Again – the links to these two apps are MyFacebook (my favorite), or Facebook Sidebar Gadget if that’s what you prefer.

Did you find either of these sidebar gadgets useful? Do you know of any other great social networking Vista sidebar gadgets? Share your insight in the comments section below.

Juice – An Excellent Quick Reference Sidebar for Firefox

Stefan Neagu — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 21:01:30 +0000

Juice is a lightweight addon for Firefox which brings you a wealth of relevant info for anything you need with a single click. Simply highlight the word and drag it to the side and Juice will quickly get for you the related Wikipedia entry, videos, pics and lots of other relevant information – all neatly organized in the sidebar.

This sidebar makes research a breeze. Juice is currently in open-beta and available for free from Linkool Labs.

Juice has proven to be very useful, and has saved me extra open tabs and a lot of time. The Juice algorithm gathers information from multiple sources and aggregates it in a very simple, easy to use interface. For instance, you can just drag and drop “Google” (or any other company’s name) from an article to read the company description on CrunchBase, the latest stock quotations, news articles from major media outlets as well as blogs, images and video.

Plus the amazing thing about this addon is its speed and accuracy. It takes a second at the most for all this information to display – and it is contextually sensitive – which means a search for something like “apple” won’t relay you news about fruits if you’re visiting a tech-related website.

The Juice website explains the ‘magic’ feature:

This engine, comprised of a natural language processing system and a dictionary management system, helps to evolve the semantic web by connecting keywords with the most relevant, rich content from third-party web services.

It’s engine fails gracefully when it can’t find information using its algorithm – to an improved Google search - with tabs for Images, News, Videos and Blogs. There are no obtrusive ads – a big plus when it comes to these personalized searches.

Here’s Juice’s demo video from YouTube :

When it comes to beta applications, especially these days, with tight release schedules and even more demanding investors, you come to expect crashes and hangs. Not with Juice which took 2,3MB extra memory and didn’t cause any problems at all. The download itself is small, the download bar stopping at about 500KB.

It’s my job to test different things and write about them, but I don’t often continue using the product regularly. Like John C. Dvorak said: “99% of everything is crap”. Juice definitely deserves its space on my computer.

6 Of The Best Items For Your Blog’s Sidebar

Jimmy Rogers — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 16:01:04 +0000

Even the best blog authors need a little help to spice up their sidebar. While some argue that a plain, white-space inspired sidebar is best, I’ve become used to the little gardens of chicklets that most bloggers cultivate next to their posts.

Here are some of the best ones I’ve run into on the web.

1. Page Rank Checker

When it comes right down to it, this may be one of the most important metrics on your blog. While some people say Google Page Rank isn’t as important as it used to be, it still determines how high up Google will generally display your site when it is competing with others on a particular search term. Once your Page Rank grows above level 2 or so (remember each level is logarithmically harder to get to than the last), it isn’t a bad idea to show it off. This is especially useful if your readers don’t have the Google toolbar installed.

If you don’t know what your Page Rank is, you can either get the toolbar, or you can just pop over to PRChecker and submit your site’s URL.

2. Who’s.amung.us

Don’t worry, this is the last “true” chicklet on the list. It’s a very worthy addition though, because it tracks not the number of visits to your site, but instead, the actual number of users on your site at any given time. For instance, if you had a surge of users and had 50 viewing your site simultaneously and then it went back down to 10 users, Who’s.amung.us would give you both the minimum and maximum numbers for the day.

On top of this, it’s not account based, so anyone can view your stats and you can look up the stats of other participating sites. A really original way of thinking about site traffic!

3. TwitStamp

I discovered our second Twitter-related entry when I came across it on Mark’s blog (he’s our managing editor). He has a ton of great widgets on his sidebar (his articles aren’t too shabby either), but this one really stood out to me. It’s a clear summary of your Twitter information and along with your latest update, it includes several of the people you are following as well. There are several configuration options and you can test it out on a dark or light background before copying the code.

4. Retaggr

While Retaggr has a great number of uses, one of their neatest features is a collapsable profile card. When it renders on your page, it will look like a small chicklet that fits in with any others you might have. Upon clicking it, though, it inflates into a complete profile of all your Retaggr information. It even has a little “loading” circle to indicate what’s going on to users. Of course you need to be a Retaggr user already or create a free account, but it’s well worth it for all the different widgets they have available.

My only complaint is that many users might not know to click the widget or what it is at all. You might frame it with a little explanatory text if you are worried about this.

5. Wakoopa

Wakoopa is an interesting little site that we talked about a few weeks ago. I shouldn’t really say little, as it’s a huge database of software and, recently, web apps. If you have a free Wakoopa account, you can get several different widgets that utilize data collected about what software you use most frequently. As a power-user you might very well define yourself by the software you use every single day. This top list probably says more about you than you think.

The widget is relatively attractive and functionally narrow. There aren’t a lot of customization options right now, but I think the information it provides is valuable enough to make up for this.

6. The Classic Blogroll

The last entry on our list isn’t really a widget at all. At least not in the traditional sense. Since time immemorium, blogs have had lists of links to other sites on them called “blogrolls.” I have noticed a marked decrease in the number of blogs using these recently and would like to emphasize how they can be useful to both bloggers and the community at large.

First of all, a blogroll can say a lot about how YOU view the rest of the internet. You can pad the top with a few sites you visit almost every day, then list a few blogs whose owners you are familiar with. Be careful not to overpopulate your blogroll with too many sites though. Otherwise, you might hurt your Page Rank by linking to lesser websites. If you have almost no Page Rank it doesn’t matter so much, but you won’t want anything holding you back in the future.

If you have a good relationship with another blogger, encourage them to swap links with you, that way readers of both your blogs can be shared between you.

Wrap-Up

That’s all for now. There are a MILLION widgets, chicklets, embeds, and other discrete objects you can place on your blog. Be considerate of your users when doing this and try to limit yourself to about two lengths of a standard monitor. Beyond this not only will your widgets get no visibility, but you’re just increasing your load time.

Be sure to share your favorite widgets in the comments and let us know how you use your sidebar.

Dress Up Your Desktop Sidebar with Samurize

Ken Burkes — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 18:20:21 +0000

I’ve always been the type of person who’s pretty concerned about how their desktop looks. I want my desktop to look perfect, especially since I’ll be staring at it for hours on end. I’m also the type of person who loves to customize and get the latest stats on my computer.

I used to use the old Vista sidebar for this task, but that wasn’t nearly as meaty as I had hoped. I tried the sidebar in Google Desktop for a while, but it looked a bit ugly to me . After browsing around for a little bit, I discovered an extremely cool app called Samurize that could make my desktop look freaking amazing while telling me computer stats and many other things.

What is it?

While I myself consider Samurize to be more of a sidebar program than anything else; it’s so flexible that it can take on many different jobs and execute them perfectly. Samurize can do whatever you want it to do. Here is how the makers of Samurize describe their product:

“Samurize is an advanced system monitoring and desktop enhancement engine for Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista. IT professionals, overclockers, gamers and desktop modders alike use Samurize for system information, weather reports, news headlines and much much more. And best of all, Samurize is 100% free!”

That’s probably the best description of the program you’ll find, but once you go to the website and see some example of what you can create, you’ll be blown away and see just what you can do with this program.

Features

As mentioned above, Samurize is a tool that can do many different tasks, but here are a list of things that I’ve used it for so you can get a better idea of how you can customize it to suit yourself.

You can use Samurize to:

Make your desktop look cooler
Monitor very precise usage of RAM and CPU
Get your latest News/Weather/To-Do List updates
Monitor useless but cool information about your computer usage
Control your music player
Lots more

How to use it:

After you download Samurize, you’re going to have to customize it to make it look good. To do this, you can either find a pre-configured package to download or make one yourself. If you feel like making one yourself, you’ll want to head over to the tutorials so you don’t mess anything up. My recommendation is for you to download a pre-configured package that you like, and then configure things using the included ‘Config Editor’. Just right click on the icon after you’ve installed Samurize, and you should see something like this:

Click it to open up the Config Editor.

I know it’s really scary when you first see it, but the concepts are very easy to understand if you’re just doing basic editing. It’s a WYSIWYG editor, so all you need to do is to drag things where you want them and they’ll show up on your desktop at the place you wanted.

To customize things even more, you can install plugins. It’s really a great app that you can customize to your desires. If you need help, you can even go on their IRC and get tips from the pros.

Examples:

Instead of ranting on about how cool Samurize is, I think it would be better if I showed a few examples of the customizations people have created and have you decide on your own. Here are three of my favorite pre-made packages.

Falcone’s Desktop: Download

Glass: Download

Axiom: Download

Dego: Download

Hopefully that should give you guys all an idea of what an awesome program Samurize is. Download it, play around with it, and then post back here. I’d love to hear your thoughts and see your designs. Also, are there any other sidebar programs you use instead of the one provided in Windows Vista?

Post your comments below!