Vista Sidebar Gadgets Location

Mainly a reminder for myself but if your looking for the folder where the sidebar gadgets are installed

C:\User\Username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Sidebar\Gadgets

Each .gadget file is a compressed file that contains all the files that make up the gadget

Currently i have the following gadgets on my sidebar

Gmail Checker – Nice gadget that lets you know when you have new gmail

Server Ping – Nice little gadget that gives me green lights when my servers are up!

Outlook To-Do List - Does what it says on the tin

Slideshow – Roates pictures of my little girl. Who needs photo sellotaped to the screen! (read my tip on that here)

Notes - Little tear off style notes..currently holds my panda golf level password <blush>

WordPress – Miniture dashboard for this blog. Gives me quick access to common functions such as Write, bookmark, dashboard

I do think that the sidebar will eventually mature as more business style apps appear for it. I’ve got loads of ideas that i need to get round to planning out properly

Cool New Sidebar Gadgets

Over on the Live Search blog they have released a couple of new sidebar gadgets

While i like the look of the traffic information gadget i’m in the UK so it’s of no use to me

I do like the Live Search Gadget. Simply drop it on your sidebar and type in your search term.

The results appear in a pop out window. It is also configurable and lets you search specific sites and use search macros
I have one request though…

“Can we have regional settings please?”

When i use live search (or google) i frequently tick the “only show me sites from the UK” box.

Other than that keep up the good work!

Slideshow Gadget

My first Vista tip!

I’m loving the sidebar at the moment. I changed the options so that it is always on top and dropped a couple of useful things on there.

Clock, it’s a bit more visible than the clock in the system tray.

Remote Desktop Connection Gadget - allows me to quickly Remote Desktop into any of the servers i’m looking after

Slideshow – I use this to cycle pictures of my daughter

So i dropped the slideshow gadget onto the sidebar. Created a search to only find pictures that are tagged with my daughers name and i tried to point the gadget at the search…no not happening.

I was a little bit annoyed that i couldn’t do this. It meant i’d have to create a seperate folder and it starts to do away with the whole “tagging” feature (which i really love btw!)

Anyway a bit of digging this morning comes up with the following from the sidebar team blog

1)      Create an actual folder

2)      Perform a search of pictures

3)      Save search to created folder

4)      Point the Slideshow gadget at the created folder

5)      Make sure “Include subfolders”  is checked

Lo and behold it works!