I can’t understand why this gadget entertains me so much… It just does! The Satellite Tracking Tool allows you to dive into that unknown that is space. Who hasn’t thought once or twice about space. So to be able to watch a satellite move over your head is amazing. Also something cool to note is how fast the satellites move. All my High School physics is coming back to me.

The Satellite Tracking Tool uses Google Maps to map a live feed of the location of satellites. You can also pick and choose which Satellite you want to watch.

Just in case you aren’t a Venesat-1 fan like me you can choose from an assortment of Navstar satellites. One major bonus is that this gadget did not slow down my iGoogle page at all. This was a relief, because from experience I have found that certain Google Maps gadgets have caused a major slowdown. I have noticed that every once in a while the satellites seem to stop moving. This is either because aliens are hijacking the satellite or more likely the feed is getting interrupted. Also there is no maximize feature implemented yet unfortunately so you will be forced to watch the satellites move in a tiny window.

Overall the Satellite Tracking Tool is a great gadget. This is saying a lot from me, because I haven’t enjoyed science since Bill Nye the Science Guy was around.

This is my first blog entry and I wanted to find a gadget that met a few key conditions.

1. Had less users than it deserved.
2. Showed that iGoogle is turning into something bigger than just a homepage.
3. Was obviously a terrific gadget.

So after going on my quest to find the perfect gadget I stumbled across Online Painter By Offtype.Net. It currently has around 6000 users, but I think it deserves far more. Nowadays some people may be spoiled by super powerful Photoshop software, but back in the early days of Windows 1 (yeah I said Windows 1 from 1985) Microsoft Paint was all you had. Still to this day there is something elegant about artists who choose to use this basic program. This experience is recreated for iGoogle.

Online Painter is a simple program: no cut,paste, or crop. However, it doesn’t need it. With a small color pallet and varying paintbrush thicknesses you are being challenged to create the best artwork you can. Or if you are just looking for a little distraction, casual doodling is fine. Best of all you can share you art through Offtype.Net’s free web server. There you can brag, rate, and comment on various creations. If there was one thing that could be changed to better the experience it would be to implement expanding. While on there website Offtype.net does provide two sizes of Online Painter, the size of the paint window does not increase when you expand the window.

So while most people will agree that Online Painter is not a technological marvel, I think that like Windows this is a first step towards something much larger for iGoogle.

This gadget is a fully-functional version of Popcap’s Bejeweled game (probably a renegade gadget since Popcap is not the developer). Since 2001, Bejeweled has been downloaded 150 million times, making it one of the most popular games on the internet. The objective of this game is to swap one gem with an adjacent gem to form a horizontal or vertical chain of three or more gems. Bonus points are given when more than three identical gems are formed or forms two lines of identical gems in one swap. Gems disappear when chains are formed and gems fall from the top to fill in gaps. If you love Scrabulous, you’ll probably like this game.

In terms of it’s iGoogle implementation, the game is unfortunately shrunk down a bit from it’s standalone version and no canvas mode has been created. It will also slow down your page quite a bit, so you might want to keep it minimized when you’re not using it. In general I can’t give much in the way of props to the developer, since he didn’t do too much here, but to his credit the game is not plastered with ads, which is a big plus.