A few weeks ago my Dell notebook's hard drive died. Since I had to rebuild the system anyway, I decided to install Microsoft Windows Vista instead of XP Professional. I also decided to put the trusty Apple iBook I've been carrying to meetings away so that I could immerse myself in Vista to learn in a real world setting (vs. a the test PC I used for beta-testing).

The first thing Windows users ask about while looking at my Vista desktop are the Vista Gadgets in both the Vista Sidebar and scattered undocked on the desktop. Deja vu! It is just like what happened when Apple released Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4) and revealed its Dashboard Widgets.

There's something incredibly compelling about small single purpose but powerful little windows scattered a desktop. There's a sense of immediacy of access and instant recognition of a simple but useful function (vs. the often complex and nearly impossible to understand user interfaces of conventional large applications). My Vista desktop has clock, calendar, weather, yellow note pad, and system resource meter gadgets on it.

If you don't have Microsoft Windows Vista yet (it will not go into widespread release until the end of January 2007), you can try out the unmentioned parent of both Apple's Dashboard and Microsoft's Gadgets...

Yahoo! Widgets

Yahoo! brought the creator of Konfabulator (See Wikipedia entry) and rebranded it as the Yahoo! Widget Engine. This inspiration for both the Apple and Microsoft products is, unlike the Microsoft and Apple products, available for both Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac OS X. And, best of all, it is free.

You can learn more about Microsoft's Gadgets and Sidebar at...

MicrosoftGadgets.com

You can learn more about Apple's Dashboard for Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) at...

Mac OS X Dashboard

There are many many free and useful Gadgets and Widgets the Apple, Microsoft, and Yahoo! client-side gizmo applications.

And, if you want to delve way back into cyber-time to learn about what I consider to be the DOS based grandparent of all these mini-app platforms, check out the Wikipedia entry for Borland SideKick.