One of the newest tools available only in Microsoft Vista is the Live Search Gadget, a downloadable feature that enables search results to be displayed for certain queries.
This gadget comes with customizable features, supporting custom searches through macros that can be found in Windows Live Gallery.
Live Search Traffic Gadget is another tool which initially produces traffic information for the following U.S. cities: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, New York, Oklahoma City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland, Providence, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis, Tampa, Washington DC. Information provided includes driving directions, local search and a wide scale traffic view.
The mishap regarding Google Maps in Australia is still fresh in the minds of many. So this tool’s launch could be a chance to take loyalty out of Google.
Getting out of the browser does not seem appealing to me at first thought. But this tool might defy my conventional wisdom that the browser should be the central container of information. Yet, problems arise (phishing, viruses, network timeouts, etc) so that if another media proves to be more efficient in delivering accurate and timely results there’s no reason why we shouldn’t embrace it.
Unfortunately at the moment, I don’t have a Vista Sidebar to test this one.
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