West, Donavon West

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Are you into politics? I mean way into politics. Will you be watching with baited breath all four debates? Countdown the important events in the 2008 Presidential Election with the Election Countdown 2008 Gadget.

Countdown to all three Presidential debates, the Vice Presidential debate as well as Elections day and Inauguration Day.

Important links will rotate at the bottom of the gadget including links to register to vote at RocktheVote.com as well as the two major party candidates’ websites.

Choose from eight different gadget skins including one for Barack Obama, John McCain, Old Glory and more:

Current version: 1.4.0.1. Click Download Now to get the latest.

Are you a political junkie like I am? Can’t get enough of the Obama McCain battle?

Now you can keep track of the Gallup Daily Election Polling Results for the Presidential General Election, Obama vs. McCain, right from your Vista Sidebar.

Click on either of the candidate areas to get a flyout with a graph of tracking data over the past few months. Click on the Gallup logo to go to Gallup’s website.

Here is the gadget shown with the flyout:

Please let me know what you think by leaving your comments below.

Updates:

Version 1.4.0.1:

• Fixes a fatal bug caused by a chage in he XML feed

Version 1.4.0.0:

• Added deltas for Presidential Polls (ex: "down 1%")

Version 1.3.0.1:

• Added smooth scrolling

Version 1.2.0.0:

• Additionally shows Consumer Confidence, Standard of Living, Job Market, Well-Being, Health and Mood polling data.

If you’re any kind of computer geek at all then you know the names Paul Thurrott and Leo Laporte. Over on twit.tv they do a podcast together called Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott.

Last week’s show featured Microsoft at the Olympics and during the segment they also mentioned my Beijing 2008 medal count Windows Vista Sidebar Gadget.

Head on over and give it a listen. It’s at roughly the 50 minute mark. Thanks Paul!

I was looking up some information on an old gadget that I wrote for a client and realized that I don’t have a central location where I can profile all of my gadgets. I’ve been meaning to put together a portfolio, but there never seems to be enough time at the end of the week.

So I thought that I’d do the next best thing and at least put something together. I came up with this image collage showing most of the gadgets that I’ve written over the years. Who remembers Live Clock and the popular Windows Vista Countdown gadget?

Click on the thumbnail image below to see all of the gadgets in full scale.

At the time I released the Beijing 2008 gadget for Windows Vista, I had no idea that NBC had an official Windows Vista Sidebar version of their own (written for them by Clearspring).

Here they are side-by-side on the Windows Vista sidebar. I’m not kidding you folks, this is a full sized untouched screen shot. Notice how small the text is on the NBC version. In some cases you can’t even read it (i.e. does China has 33 or 35 medals)? Also notice how pixilated the “NBCOLYMPICS.COM” title is. And what’s with the white background surrounding the red border?

I don’t mean to knock them too much but please! In Clearspring’s defense, this is a wonderful gadget when running as a web widget where the gadget is displayed in a larger form. But how could NBC even think of releasing such a piece of @#*! for a Vista Sidebar gadget!

When will some people learn that you can’t always create one widget that works perfectly for the web and for the Sidebar. Hey, NBC. Next time you need a Vista Sidebar gadget, call me! :)

If you have a blog or website, I do recommend the various NBC Olympics widgets. Also check out NBCOlympics.com for complete Olympics coverage. You can also watch Olympic content directly within Windows Media Center on PCs running Windows Vista Home Premium or Windows Vista Ultimate.

In the “blow my own horn” department… With a little over a day after posting my Beijing 2008 medal count gadget, it has had over 1500 downloads. The gadget has also made an impression on Google as it’s #2 search result for the keywords 2008 olympics medal count (second only to the official Olympics website).

After an uproars about “sort order” (probably from the Germans and Italians) I’ve updated the gadget to allow you to choose to sort by “medal count” (as the old gadget did) or the new default method of “gold/silver/bronze”.

As you can see from the two gadgets above, the left one is sorted by gold/silver/bronze and has Germany in third place. The gadget on the right is sorted by total medal count and has Korea in third place. The redish/orange column represents the current sort order.

Click here to download the latest gadget (which also has support for the French Olympics website).

Either way you look at it, China is beating the Unites States.

Are you someone who follows the Olympics every hour of the day? Or maybe you just want to keep and eye on who’s leading in the medal count. Either way, the Beijing 2008 Medal Count Vista Sidebar gadget may be for you. It updates every 15 minutes throughout the day and shows the top 5 countries gold, silver and bronze medal counts. Click on the country name or flag to view detailed medal standing on Beijing2008.com.

1. Click here to download the gadget.
2. You will see this warning below. Click Save.
   
3. After the gadget downloads, open Windows Explorer to the location that you saved the gadget.
4. Double click on the file downloaded file Beijing2008.gadget to install the gadget onto the Windows Vista Sidebar.
5. You will see another warning. Just click Install.
   

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