Back around Thanksgiving, I wrote a blog about Yahoo's Widgets and how useful and fun they can be. I still love Widgets and have them installed on my computers. If you don't remember that blog, Widgets are a small, little programs that run on your desktop giving you current information and, in some situations, games to play when you're bored.
Among my favorites are current weather, time, Sudoku, e-mail monitoring (to inform me about new mail in all four of my e-mail accounts), current news feeds, local gas price monitoring, computer memory monitoring, and a few more. There are thousands of Yahoo Widgets to choose from and they can be easily added to your collection. I've installed many of them, then deinstalled some of them as they were not that helpful to me. All-in-all, its a useful tool, and the best part...you can turn them on and off with a click of your mouse.
Today, I want to talk about another desktop tool that is very good and might be useful for you. It is called Desktop Sidebar and is available for free on the Net at their Website. It emulates the sidebar that comes with Windows Vista. It comes complete with several useful tools that you can add and subtract from your tool bar and can be placed at different locations on your screen. I have mine on the right side of my screen, just like Windows Vista does.
What is great, especially on my new wide screen flat panel monitor, is that when I have it running, it is always on my screen. When you run other programs like Word, Firefox, etc. at full screen, they do not cover the sidebar. In fact, Sidebard only takes up a small portion of the screen, but most of what is showing is very useful.
For instance, on mine right now, I have several panels running, including a very readable clock, local weather, news, PC performance monitor, a slide show with several continually changing screens, access to Windows Media Player, a quick launch bar (that replaces the one running on my taskbar), an e-mail checker than monitors all new mail coming into my accounts, and a volume control for my speakers.
Now how, you ask, does all that fit on my screen? Well, each panel is collapsible and is only accessible by clicking on it to make it a little larger. Then, you can run your mouse over the area and it will expand even more to give you greater details. For instance on the weather panel, I've set it to show me the current temperature and conditions and the projected high temp for the day. When I run my mouse over it, it automatically opens a temporary larger screen with all the details. I find this very useful.
There are a few additional panels you can add from their website, especially different color schemes, but it doesn't have the wide variety of add-ons like Yahoo Widgets. Still it does provide some very useful information, which is what it is supposed to do....and it takes up far less screen space than Widgets as well as very little memory. You might like to head over to their Website and check it out for yourself. It is free and you can delete it if you don't like it...or click it off and on when you want. I have it on for most every program I use, except when I want the full use of my screen for programs such as Photoshop and Painter.
In the next blog, I will talk about another useful desktop tool called Klips.
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