More and more gadgets

Posted by Mendel Chuang, Product Marketing Manager

We hope you're liking the new Google Desktop Sidebar that we introduced last week, but we hope you like it even more with these great new gadgets:

• NPR Now Playing - Are you a fan of NPR? Well, they've created a new gadget for you. You can keep the NPR Now Playing gadget in your Sidebar or on your desktop for easy access to NPR programming. You'll never be far from your favorite programs and you can start listening with just a push of the button.
  

• Moon Phase - We have gadgets to tell you about the weather, but what about the phases of the moon? This latest gadget tells you where we are, lunar-phase-wise, on your desktop. Simply place this virtual moon anywhere you want and hover your mouse over it to get more details.

• Wikipedia Search - For all those inquisitive minds out there, here's another great gadget. Whenever there's a topic you want to explore or just something you don't know about, theWikipedia search gadget lets you quickly search Wikipedia. It also shows results and suggestions while you type, and saves your recent searches for easy access.

And if you want to customize your Sidebar, there are several ways to do it. From the Sidebar options menu, you can turn off the "Always on Top" feature to allow it to go to the background (easily bring it to the front by pressing shift twice). Or select the "Auto-hide" feature from the same menu to hide the Sidebar off the screen when your mouse isn't near it. And just drag the edge of the Sidebar to adjust the width.

To find out more about what you can do with your Sidebar, check out our features page or visit the Google Gadgets page to find other new gadgets.

And by the way, have a happy Thanksgiving.

Check out the new Sidebar

Posted by Kevin Tom, Product Manager

The Google Desktop Sidebar has always been great at delivering content personalized to individual users, ever since it was introduced way back in the second version of Google Desktop. But we kept thinking: what's a better way to deliver this content? In later versions of Google Desktop we let gadgets float on the desktop. But the Sidebar was starting to get a bit jealous and we couldn't restrain it any longer, so now there's Google Desktop 4.5, featuring a Sidebar with a new look.

The new Sidebar is transparent, so it fits seamlessly with your desktop environment. Gadgets that fought for attention now look right at home, and content-heavy gadgets get new frames and icons that make it easier to tell them apart. All of this leads to a better place to find your email, news, feeds, stock prices, weather and other essential information. And this version is compatible with all of the latest software including Microsoft Vista, Office 2007 and Mozilla Firefox 2.0. So what are you waiting for? Try the new Sidebar in Google Desktop now.

Radio Roundabout...the town of two towers

 





I know this is off-topic, but I hope you'll fogive me.


So there I am, driving along the Randweg, a road on the southern side of the my home town, Huizen, in the Netherlands.

I came up to a roundabout that has been recently renovated and what did I see? A fifth-size replica of the world's first rotatable shortwave transmitting tower....slap bang in the middle of a new roundabout. Went back home to get the camera...just couldn't believe it. It was made of wood and stood on a site about 300 metres from the roundabout between 1937 until 22nd September 1958 when it was blown-up. Seems it took four attempts to knock the 63 metre high masts over. A new, more powerful site in Lopik, near Utrecht took over the transmissions of what was, by then, Radio Nederland Wereldomroep. The scale-model is just over 12 metres high.

As I was filming this new monument, I got mixed reactions from passers by. Some seem to be dead against it, probably because they hadn't a clue what it was. Some older folk, born and bred in this fishing village, were kinda proud of Huizen's link with the past. One kindly old gent offered to show me a set of old photos he'd kept. Another lady remember playing in the masts in 1958 when the towers were awaiting demolition. She also recalled how the turntable used to make a strange squeal like wheels on a railway engine as it spun round late in the afternoons and at night. The antenna strung between the masts was directional. By rotating it, the signal could be beamed in different directions, mainly to Asia, Africa and North America. The antenna, I believe, was actually tuned to a single frequency in the early days, 9590 kHz in the 31 metre band.
More pictures on my Flickr pages.  

Tape Recorder Collection

Tape Recorder Collection
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks.

Just taken a tour of a fascinating museum located in the gardens behind St Peter's Basilica. Its a collection of equipment used by reporters and broadcasters at Vatican Radio and also houses some standby medium and shortwave transmitters. Nice to see the old UHER sitting there. My first machine.