http://www.amazon.com/Windows-Vista-Sidebar-blueprint-developing/dp/0470043946/ref=sr_1_1/103-0002078-4585475?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1193863841&sr=8-1

A new book arrived at my house today.   The book is Microsoft Windows Vista Sidebar by Wiley Publishing and written by Dave Konopka.

I get asked a lot of questions about how to build gadgets and I've done my time building a few of them.  The real issue with Gadgets is that the information for building them is pretty much spread all over the web.  You spend more time researching them then in the actual construction of them.  Add the confusion around the remake of Vista and the SideBar between 2003 and 2004 and you even have information out there that is downright wrong.

From my early investigation this is an excellent book and recommended.  It takes you through step by step on how to build a gadget and how to style it so it looks professional.  If you don't know CSS or even HTML this book takes you through it in great detail. 

The topics that make it worth while to me are as follows:

• Images - handling blur, rotation, stretching and drop shadows
• Flyouts and getting parameters from the user
• Using AJAX, RSS and XML in your gadgets
• Polling Frequency and Web Services
• Flash Movies
• IFrames
• even Silverlight hosting

Great job Dave!

This is one of the coolest videos I've seen in a while - a cheap web cam and a ubiquitous visualization platform like WPF form a powerful partnership for augmented reality.

 

Click here to see the video.