I would love to see a gas Gadget that looks at the cost of gas and gives you the lowest in your area!

I would like a gadget that allows me to inject an ounce of clue into the clueless.. Also one that allows me to control the outcome of elections wouldnt be too bad..

Sorry if that seems harsh, it was meant in the best vein of satire... In reality you should be able to show some information like that in a gadget with a trival effort... The probem is that there is not really a good sorce of geographical gas prices to harvest (yet).

Just like until the advent and popularity of electronic or better yet internet voting, My gadget will have a problem interfacing with the local poll workers =)

Dan

I have discussed this with a couple of friends of mine, and they all thought my ideea was great, so here goes...

What I had in mind, is that I`d love a container at the bottom at the sidebar, that can stack up one or more standard progress bars, each looking like:

[AppIcon] [Title] [Progress%] [v]
[========================== ][pause] [cancel]

The ideea is, to offer MicroSoft and third party software the possibility to put their backround progress windows in there so you can always keep your eye on them, and use less taskbar and desktop space.

You could for example have there:
- windows explorer file copy/move/delete progress;
- windows internet explorer download progress
- firefox downloads
- outlook send/receive progress
- total commander background copy/move/delete/upload/download/pack/unpack/etc.. progress
- CD/DVD burning progress
- and many many more.

I`d really like a feedback if possible, on this ideea.

That's a pretty cool idea, but I think there would definitely have to be a limit on the number of progress bars down there. It would be nice to push file copy progress, CD/DVD burn progress, etc off of the desktop and taskbar, but how much trouble is it going to be to grab those windows and how hard is it going to be to get 3rd party company's to do it?

What would be really nice would be the ability to minimize a install/setup program down to the sidebar with a progress meter on the install process...

Well, my ideea was not for the sidebar to catch progress windows, but rather to offer software the posibility to use that feature for their progress windows, and easy. (if they want that feature supported).
Then, about the limiting of the number of progress bars, you can stack them and only show as many as can fit in the dimensions the user sets by resizing upd-down the container. As for the rest, you can slide down/up and list them all.