Gadget Name:  Amazon Product Finder V1.00

Description:  Search Amazon and Other Popular Sites fast and easy. Get Full reviews, Photographs of items and descriptions in a nice easy to read layout. Order online. Find the best prices. shop online safely.

Review:  I can’t say I was particularly impressed when I tried this gadget out.  It offers a basic categorical search, but the kicker is that it doesn’t go to Amazon.com.  In fact, this gadget makes a search off third party website acting as a storefront for Amazon.com.  So essentially, it adds in a layer between the user and Amazon so that the site can tag products with the affiliate code.  Now, I have no problem with tagging with an affiliate code, my beef is how the site has been set up.  It comes off as an online storefront, though all it does is pull the amazon XML feed from the API to display search results.  This might be a little more useful if the website was designed a little better or looked a bit more professional.  Though given the purpose of this gadget, I would almost just want to go straight to amazon.com’s search page as it effectively does the same thing And I’d already be there ready to buy stuff.  The other problem with this gadget is the link on the bottom that seemingly goes somewhere, though I haven’t gotten the page to load yet.  But shouldn’t this link go to the XML display page instead of someplace different (the URL looks like it goes to a separate affiliate site).  Either way, while the effort is commendable, I feel this gadget could have gone a few steps further to make itself either more useful or more aesthetic, or perhaps, just better overall.

Appearance: 2 / 5

Functionality: 1.5 / 5

Usefulness: 1 / 5

Overall: 1.5 / 5

Download @ Windows Live Gallery

Since there are so many gadgets out there doing different things, it might be a good time to take a look at what one could call the “Nirvana” of gadget design.  Much like the real thing, it’s about peace of mind for the person using it.  With a search gadget, the user should in theory be able to search the internet from the comfort of their desktop without popping open a web browser until they absolutely need it.  Sometimes this will be for just a single website, other time, the whole internet.

The goal is to make the experience of using the gadget worthwhile to the user.  Make it fun and easy for them to do things they would normally do in other applications.  If you make an informational gadget, include what they need right on the gadget itself and then allow for more information in an intuitive way.  Do this, and the user might stick with you till another gadget comes out that’s better.

Sometimes it might seem like the best idea to cut corners for fear that the hard work won’t pay off.  Now while this is based on a decision by decision process, it has been my experience that the extra steps you take to make the gadget easier to use will always pay off.  Always.  There will be someone out there who notices.

As a general rule, if you can see the problem, there’s a good chance someone else can too. 

So mind the road and travel in places where few have walked, and should you travel on the beaten path, walk with grace and you’ll be sure to reach the goal as it were.

Gadget Name:  Slaine’s World of Warcraft Realm Status Gadget

Description:  This gadget will show the realm status of any particular server for the popular game World of Warcraft.  you can even click the flag button to open up Blizzard’s realm status page as per the country currently configured.

Review:  I like this gadget.  It’s small, does a decent job, and doesn’t attempt to take on anything too major for it’s purpose.  That being said, there is always room for improvement.  Since the main functions of the gadget are pretty solid, what I would love to see are additional options for people to say, display certain things in the big green orb like the realm population or queue number. I’m not sure if it’s possible, but I would also love to have a realm pull down list or maybe some other sort of lookup for the realms of a particular region.  The only reason being that some of those names are rather hard to spell out.  A couple of additional color skins would be a nifty feature as well.  But enough complaining, I will say that this gadget is probably one of the best looking Warcraft based gadgets on Live.com and it’s functionality is actualy useful for certain people playing on multiple realms or perhaps on a realm with an unstable populace.  Overall, this is a pretty sweet gadget. 

Appearance:  5 / 5

Functionality:  4 / 5

Usefulness:  4 / 5

Overall:  4.5 / 5

Download @ Windows Live Gallery

Search gadgets.  The gallery at Live.com is teeming with this particular style of gadget and well, it’s obvious why.  People need to search, there is some money in search compared to a few of the other gadgets, and well, searching and getting results on your desktop saves time, to mention that fact that unlike many gadgets with an uncommon use, a search gadget can be used all the time and it’s purpose remains pretty useful to the user.

So, looking through the gadgets on the Live.com gallery, we noticed that while there are a few gadgets advertising that they can search two or three sites with the same gadget, there wasn’t anyone doing anything new and exciting like trying to integrate more engines into a gadget, looking into the use of integrated video, or mapping technology (other than the MSN maps gadget).  It’s great that so many developer have gotten into the game, but when are we going to see a breakthrough with this search stuff.

Well, we suppose that if you can’t find it somewhere else, then sometimes you just have to build it.

And that’s exactly what we are doing.  An ultimate search gadget with multiple search engines and sites, an adaptive interface, advanced options, and anything else we find people want to use in there.  If they want a kitchen sink, then by God, we’ll give them a kitchen sink!  Since the gadget is still just being started, we’ll keep everyone posted on this blog as to how it’s coming along and maybe, if you’re good, we’ll post a few screen-shots. 

Squidoo.com is a wonderful resource not only for promoting things, but also a general all around set of guides on various topics.  We started our own Squidoo lens for Windows Vista Gadgets and we hope you’ll take a look.  It’s still something of a work in progress, but it’s coming along pretty nicely. 

Squidoo Lens