Widgets and desktop enhancements

File delivery service YouSendIt announced Thursday that it has released a plug-in (download) for Microsoft Office 2003 and 2007 that will allow users to send any file from Word, Excel, or PowerPoint to recipients through the company's service.

Based on my testing, the plug-in, which requires registration to download, works quite well. After surfing over to the company's plug-in page, which is already populated with other plug-ins for iPhoto, Outlook, Photoshop, and others, I downloaded the file in seconds.

Once installed, the plug-in embeds itself in Microsoft Office. On my version of Office 2007, I found YouSendIt's … Read more

If you've ever wanted to watch streaming video right on your desktop, and organize all your favorite streams in a single bucket, it's worth checking out StreamDesk. This cross-platform desktop application plays video streams from a variety of sources in a simple player that cuts out the browser completely and turns each show into a small, floating window.

Included are more than 100 various streaming video shows from a small handful of providers. If you come across one that isn't live, you're out of luck, otherwise live shows begin to stream in almost instantly. Shows you … Read more

I used to be a huge fan of Windows desktop themes. Granted, this was over 10 years ago, when I knew little about computers and was ignorant of the amount of system resources themes consumed. I don't use them today, as I prefer to keep my system clean and optimized, but I still understand the appeal. Customizing your desktop with a new theme makes for a new experience.

The Skins Factory is trying to give its users a new experience when installing desktop themes. It has announced that its Windows desktop-theme software, Hyperdesk, is now DRM-free. According to the … Read more

Oosah, a company that offers Web 2.0 hosting solutions, announced Thursday that it has launched a new widget design tool that will allow any user to easily create customizable and embeddable rich-media widgets with images, videos, and status updates from popular social-networking platforms, Twitter, YouTube, Craigslist, MySpace, and Flickr.

"Consumers are increasingly using the Internet as their platform of choice for viewing and sharing media with their families, friends, business associates, and customers," said Dan Khasis, Oosah co-founder and chief technical officer. "We felt that what was needed now was a way to make it simpler … Read more

Social networks are front and center in the latest redesign of AOL's AOL.com homepage, which the company announced Thursday and says it will start to gradually roll out to users over the next few weeks (unless they choose to opt in earlier).

A widget (or module, or gadget, or whatever you want to call it) on the new AOL.com features a tabbed interface with updates from five different social-networking and messaging services: AOL's own AIM and Bebo, MySpace, Twitter, and Facebook. Called "My Networks," the tabs invite members to log into their social profiles … Read more

For the last few years AdaptiveBlue has offered a semantically rich Web application that understands things such as books, movies, and music. Clicking on text, such as a company or movie name, brings up a context-sensitive menu of related links. The company is taking its technology a step further, adding a social dimension and renaming the product, "Glue." Along with Radar Networks' Twine and Powerset's Wikipedia search engine (acquired by Microsoft), Glue offers a compelling glimpse into how the Semantic Web will add a new, powerful level of intelligence to the Internet.

Rather than just connect things … Read more

On Thursday, I described the Pageflakes and Netvibes home page services, which I turned to after iGoogle suddenty grew a left pane and put me a click further away from my full-function Gmail in-box, among other questionable enhancements.

I also tried two other iGoogle alternatives: the beta version of the Symbaloo service and Yahoo's Delicious bookmark-sharing site and toolbar. I was hoping to find a way to view my Gmail in-box, Google Calendar, Google Reader, and Google Docs on my home page.

In the end, only iGoogle let me put all four of the elements on my start page. … Read more

Last week, my iGoogle home page suddenly got a new look via the addition of a pane on the left side containing shortcuts to my widgets. I didn't ask for the new arrangement, and I can't find a way to make the new left pane disappear.

What's worse, when I now click my Gmail in-box, I get an abbreviated version of the application, minus a search box and other useful features. To see the whole enchilada, I have to click the Launch Full Gmail link in the top-right corner of the window. Huh?

The upshot is that … Read more

Last week GrooveShark released a really cool new widget-based playlist creation tool to take your GrooveShark and GrooveShark lite created playlists off-site. The new designer which lets you put together a playlist with tracks from both the GrooveShark's online catalog and your hard drive.

If you've been looking for a proper replacement for the currently-defunct Muxtape, this is even better. While I've been fairly impressed with solutions like Mixwit, a hybrid system like this lets you search for music you don't have, while letting you upload tracks that might not be available for streaming. GrooveShark's … Read more