Windows Gadgets You Must Have As a Writer for HubPages

© 2011 by Aurelio Locsin

Windows 7 gadgets are small applications that sit on your desktop for instant access. As a writer, I rely on many of these goodies to help my writing easier and more efficient, especially for HubPages. Check them out and you may find a few that you can use. These are all available from the Windows Gadget Gallery with a simple search. But when possible, I’ve including direct links to their developers, to get around the HubPages restriction on putting too many links to one site.

Ultimate Explorer lets you search up to 50 different sites from one location. It covers such pages as Google, Amazon, eBay, YouTube, Facebook, Flickr and Wikipedia. You enter your term in the Search box, choose a search location from a dropdown and click the Search button. The results appear in your browser window, which automatically opens up.

Need to find the meaning of an unfamiliar world? Or maybe you’d like to find a better synonym for the idea you’re thinking about? Then Dictionary can provide the answers. You use one Search box and click instantly between thesaurus and dictionary. Answers appear in a flyout window, so it’s browser independent. However, you can’t add new words, nor change the appearance of the gadget.

Minimalist Notepad offers a small area where you can make quick notes. You can control the gadget size, background color, font name and font size. But you can’t print or save from the application. However, you can copy the text and paste it to your word processor, if you want to turn your notes into a full article.

PowerDo keeps your ToDo list front and center, and allows you to enter tasks, make notes for them, assign them priorities and enter due dates. You can even sort your list by priority or due date. You can specify whether to keep finished tasks and move them to the end of the list, or delete them, so they don’t clutter up the window. An Auto-Export exports your list to a text file for processing by other applications.

As the name implies, MiniBrowser is a miniature browser that is compatible with Internet Explorer. However, it memorizes and displays a specific position on a webpage. This avoids having to open up a full-page browser just to check a small part of it. Use it to display specific information such your mail inbox, radio controls, weather reports, or a live webcam. Options include window size, whether to show status and address bars, and specifying how often to reload the page.