I was just curious to see if anyone had any thoughts as to what they would consider the best gadget in the world.  It can be one that’s already out there or it can be one that you made up, really I’m just looking to see what people really want out of a gadget. 

What would make a gadget the best in the world for you?

As promised, we’ve released a new update for the Ultimate Explorer gadget that includes the new WeatherBug engine.  Here’s a quick rundown of what’s new:

• WeatherBug engine added with date / time included.
• Amazon and Drugstore flyouts have been updated and overhauled.
• We added some DocTypes to the gadget for better roll-overs.
• Various minor bug fixes.

It’s a simple update, but we hope people will enjoy it.  We’re already starting to plan out 1.4, so expect some posting about that.  Oh, and if you want to check our our new promotional site for our gadgets…

SearchGadgets.net

Download The 1.3 Update:

Download @ Live.com Gallery

Download @ BuildAGadget.com

Download @ Widgipedia.com

With the 1.3 update for the Ultimate Explorer gadget, we will be adding in another engine on top of the regular updates:  WeatherBug.  That’s right, from the same people who brought you multiple searching from the same gadget have now added in something to occupy your time when you are all searched out.  It’ll be like watching the weather channel, only less active and with smaller text.  The weather option adds in a basic weather (for the moment) as well as the date and time in large mode.  The cool part about the weather is that our search can cover just about anywhere in the world, not just the USA (thanks to the use of an actual weather API versus just RSS feeds).

And man was it a headache to put it in.  Lol.  I should have a bruise on my forehead for all the times I banged my head against the desk trying to get the events to remain consistent in the gadget.  But with a stroke of luck, we managed to get past it and got everything working fairly stable yesterday.  So, plan on seeing this for the 1.3 update. 

I suppose this could be the response to a couple of reviews from the Live Gallery, or maybe just a fit of whimsy and the need to kind of lay out a goal for this multi-headed hydra we call a search gadget.  Truth is somewhere in the middle, there was a suggestion I wanted to address and well, I think it’s time we hint at where we’re going with this thing.  Let’s begin.

Our current search gadget houses 10 search engines, each with their own interfaces and for some, search options.  Want to know how many engines this thing has planned for it?

20.  That’s right, we’re going to stick 20 different search and content engines into this little thing.  Kind of ambitious, I know.  But 20 is a good number and will allow for a ton of options for people.  Granted by the time it gets to 20, the download size will probably be over a megabyte, but we’re hoping that won’t stop you from checking it out nonetheless.

In addition to those engines, we try to address as many bugs per  update as we can.  Sometimes the bugs are caused by our systems, sometimes they aren’t.  Sometimes, JavaScript just sucks.  Lol.  But we do see any bug reports coming in and we look to see if we can fix them.  95% of the time, they will be fixed.  However, if you are one of those people who simply goes onto Live Gallery, say’s it’s broken and doesn’t elaborate…  We can’t fix what we don’t know about.  So send bug reports, screenshots, something, anything.

We’re also endeavoring to make this gadget even slicker and shinier than it is currently. Part of the reason why we haven’t included additional themes just yet is that we’ve slowly been re-perfecting the interface in places, changing this and that make it look and work better.  Constant improvement until we can’t improve anything else, and you know what?  It’s about that time when we’ll probably decide to update the look.

So the general road-map to this thing is still pretty vague, but at least we can safely say that for the moment, the Ultimate Explorer gadget will most likely be capped off at 20 engines, fully integrated and looking as sparkly as we can make them.

Stay tuned, there’s more coming.